Abstract
Nowadays, instant messaging applications (apps) are one of the most popular applications for mobile devices with millions of active users. However, mobile devices present hardware and software characteristics and limitations compared with personal computers. Hence, to address the usability issues of mobile apps, a specific methodology must be conducted. This paper shows the findings from a systematic analysis of these applications on iOS mobile platform that was conducted to identify some usability issues in mobile applications for instant messaging. The overall process includes a Keystroke-Level Modeling and a Mobile Heuristic Evaluation. In the same trend, we propose a set of guidelines for improving the usability of these apps. Based on our findings, this analysis will help in the future to create more effective mobile applications for instant messaging.
Highlights
Mobile devices have become an essential tool in our daily lives [1], to the point that the number of mobile users has been increasing more and more in recent years, from 640 million of Android and iOS active devices in 2012 [2] to 2,562 million of devices in 2016 [3]
Along with Step 5, the main functionalities are tested with two methodologies: the Keystroke-Level Modeling (KLM) to estimate time to complete tasks and the Mobile Usability Heuristics (MUH) to detect more usability problems with mobile experts
As highlighted in this paper, the widespread propagation of mobile devices and instant messaging apps has led to addressing their usability issues differently from personal computers (PCs) evaluations
Summary
Mobile devices have become an essential tool in our daily lives [1], to the point that the number of mobile users has been increasing more and more in recent years, from 640 million of Android and iOS active devices in 2012 [2] to 2,562 million of devices in 2016 [3] Considerable is this increase that in the summer of 2016 Apple reported the sale of its billionth iPhone [4]. The Apple App Store reveals an increase in the number of available apps, from 1,200,000 (as of July 2014) to 2,200,000 (as of January 2017) [5, 6] Among all those applications there are some for written communication that have become ubiquitous in contemporary society [7, 8], such as instant messaging (so called IM apps), social networks, or email apps. Users like simplicity to complete tasks and ease of learning or less time consumption [14,15,16], so they probably will choose the best app
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