Abstract
Usability is key to achieve quality in software products. The client applications with a high score in usability might impact on the power consumption when they are run in a PC. For this reason, energy savings turn to be critical in green software systems. In this paper the relationship between the usability evaluations of the GUIs and the power consumption measurements of the main components of a PC were analysed. A set of 5 web-based personal health records (PHRs) were selected as a case study. The usability assessment was performed by an expert, employing the 14 principles of design by Alan Dix as heuristics. They were scored on a Likert scale after performing a collection of common tasks in the PHRs. At the same time, an equipment to measure the energy consumption of hard disk drive, graphics card, processor, monitor and power supply was used. Spearman’s index was studied for the correlations between the usability assessments and the power consumption measurements. As a results, some weak relationships were found. A total of 5 usability heuristics were observed to may influence energy consumption when they were considered in the implementation of the PHRs. These heuristics were the following ones: consistency, task migratability, observability, recoverability and responsiveness. Based on the results, the usability principles of design cannot always be related to lower energy consumption. Future research should focus on the tradeoffs between usability and power consumption of client applications when they are used in a computer.
Highlights
The efficient use of power in technology is driving the development of energy-saving architectures that require small amounts of power to work [1]
This study investigated the relationship between energy consumption of the main PC
A set of 20 typical tasks have been conducted to evaluate the usability according to 14 heuristics and the energy consumption measured with the EET equipment
Summary
The efficient use of power in technology is driving the development of energy-saving architectures that require small amounts of power to work [1]. The problem of inaccurate forecasting of the impact of ICT has been studied in literature [3]. The link between ICTs and economic growth, energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions reduces environmental degradation in the medium and long run [4]. In this context, sustainable software can contribute in the reduction of resources waste. ICT have a significant impact on the levels of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere [5]. From the ICT sector, 196 Mt CO2 e were thrown to the atmosphere in
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