Abstract

 
 
 Usability is one of the most relevant quality aspects in Web applications. A Web application is usable if it provides a friendly, direct and easy to understand interface. Many Usability Inspection Methods (UIMs) have been proposed as a cost effective way to enhance usability. However, many companies are not aware of these UIMs and consequently, are not using them. A secondary study can identify, evaluate and interpret all data that is relevant to the current knowledge available regarding UIMs that have been used to evaluate Web applications in the past few decades. Therefore, we have extended a systematic mapping study about Usability Evaluation Methods by analyzing 26 of its research papers from which we extracted and categorized UIMs. We provide practitioners and researches with the rationale to understand both the strengths and weaknesses of the emerging UIMs for the Web. Furthermore, we have summarized the relevant information of the UIMs, which suggested new ideas or theoretical basis regarding usability inspection in the Web domain. In addition, we present a new UIM and a tool for Web usability inspection starting from the results shown in this paper.
 
 
Highlights
In recent years, the demand for Web applications development has grown considerably
Feedback provided by the usability evaluation methods (UEMs) a) Survey c) Experiment a) Manual a) Requirements c) Implementation a) Yes b) Case Study d) No b) Automated b) Design b) No. Our goal with this systematic mapping extension is to analyze the current use of new Usability Inspection Methods (UIMs) in the Web domain by answering the following research question: “What new usability inspection methods have been employed by researchers to evaluate Web artifacts, and how have these methods been used?” If we look at the terms in bold in Table 1, we can see that papers having answers “new” and “inspection” to questions Q1 and Q3 respectively are related to our research question
This paper has extended a systematic mapping study on UEMs for the Web by thoroughly describing UIMs applied on the evaluation of Web artifacts
Summary
The demand for Web applications development has grown considerably. controlling and improving the quality of such applications has increased. Olsina et al [22] state that when evaluating software quality, one of the most relevant aspects is usability. The software development industry has invested in the development of a variety of Usability Inspection Methods (UIMs) to address Web usability issues [17]. Insfran and Fernandez [11] discuss that many usability evaluation methods (UEMs) have been proposed in the technical literature in order to improve the usability of different kinds of software systems. Inspections, on the other hand, are evaluations that make use of experienced inspectors to review the usability aspects of the software artifacts. The inspectors base their evaluation in guidelines that check the system’s level of achievement of usability attributes. Inspectors can predict whether there will be a usability problem or not
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