Abstract
Tourist apps can be very useful for sightseeing, and this is one of the reasons that makes them so numerous in app stores. Good usability can make the difference when choosing an app, from the user’s point of view, so this study is aimed at analyzing and discovering common usability issues in apps for tourism. This paper presents a research study with two objectives: analyzing the most common usability problems in mobile apps for tourism and proposing recommendations for improving the usability of those apps. The research process firstly identifies the main functionalities that tourist guides should have, by filtering the results obtained through the store. This was followed by a two-part experiment. The first part was a Keystroke Level Modelling analysis, where the number of taps needed to perform each main functionality in each tourist guide app was registered. Secondly, a heuristic evaluation was carried out on the best rated apps in the previous stage. Four usability experts tested the apps in real devices, by performing several tasks with a smartphone, and evaluated them according to some mobile heuristics. After this process, the most frequent usability problems in tourist guide apps were found, which allowed to discover recommendations for designing and developing mobile tourist guides. One of the recommendations is that tourist guide apps should provide at least the following functionalities: listing POIs (Points of Interest), showing information of a POI, selecting language, showing a map, working offline, and showing a tourist’s current location. Other recommendations proposed are, for example, showing relevant and complete information of POIs, such as opening hours and admission fees; showing more than one POI on the map and the distance to the tourist; and avoiding showing at the same time commercial information and tourist information.
Highlights
Mobile devices have become an essential tool in our daily lives, in both the professional and personal fields
The present study discovers and analyzes the usability issues existing in current tourist guide apps
Most of the apps for tourism are focused on the consumption stage [9], and most of travel apps (55 percent) are purchased within three days: while travelers are sitting at the airport waiting for the plane to take off or while they are at the destination [17]
Summary
Mobile devices have become an essential tool in our daily lives, in both the professional and personal fields. Smartphones have evolved, and they have stronger input capabilities, larger screens, reliable and unlimited Internet access, and powerful location awareness [3], and they have different characteristics from other devices such as PCs (Personal Computers) or tablets [4]. In addition to basic tourism information, mobile apps offer dynamic information to tourists, such as their position, service locations, distances between locations, and social and marketing information related to specific locations [12]. In a study [10], 19.7% of apps analyzed did not have an appropriate title, which is a bad usability practice and can disorient the users, because they usually have different apps installed in their smartphones and they may not be able to identify it after installation. In this study, the authors indicated that many apps were not found in the apps store, only after a long search process, in which tourists are unlikely to carry out, so some of the apps analyzed could be described as invisible to the user
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
