title: Heuristic evaluation on mobile interfaces: a new checklist.
abstract: The rapid evolution and adoption of mobile devices raise new usability challenges, given their limitations (in screen size, battery life, etc.) as well as the specific requirements of this new interaction. Traditional evaluation techniques need to be adapted in order for these requirements to be met. Heuristic evaluation (HE), an Inspection Method based on evaluation conducted by experts over a real system or prototype, is based on checklists which are desktop-centred and do not adequately detect mobile-specific usability issues. In this paper, we propose a compilation of heuristic evaluation checklists taken from the existing bibliography but readapted to new mobile interfaces. Selecting and rearranging these heuristic guidelines offer a tool which works well not just for evaluation but also as a best-practices checklist. The result is a comprehensive checklist which is experimentally evaluated as a design tool. This experimental evaluation involved two software engineers without any specific knowledge about usability, a group of ten users who compared the usability of a first prototype designed without our heuristics, and a second one after applying the proposed checklist. The results of this experiment show the usefulness of the proposed checklist for avoiding usability gaps even with nontrained developers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Technology and Architecture, ETS Ingenieria Informatica, Universidad de Sevilla, Avenida Reina Mercedes s/n. 41012 Seville, Spain.
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yáñez Gómez
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Technology and Architecture, ETS Ingenieria Informatica, Universidad de Sevilla, Avenida Reina Mercedes s/n. 41012 Seville, Spain.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cascado Caballero
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Technology and Architecture, ETS Ingenieria Informatica, Universidad de Sevilla, Avenida Reina Mercedes s/n. 41012 Seville, Spain.
authors.forename: José-Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Sevillano
mesh_terms: D040421:Cell Phone / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends*; D057189:Checklist / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D034201:Computers, Handheld / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans