Heuristic Evaluation Method Applied to the Usability Assessment of Smart Homes Applications

Abstract

The usability of smart homes applications is crucial to ensure their correct and pleasant use, thus contributing to the safety, comfort, and entertainment of the inhabitants of a smart home. Since heuristic evaluation is a widespread method for usability assessment, the objective of the study reported by the present paper was to verify the applicability of this method to assess the usability of smart homes applications. Therefore, an experience was conducted to apply the heuristic evaluation method to assess the usability of three different smart homes applications. This evaluation involved three evaluators and was based on the Heuristic Evaluation System Checklist (HESC). The results reveal that the application of the heuristic evaluation method using the HESC is a demanding and time consuming task, since 292 sub-heuristic should be considered. In turn, the results also show that heuristic evaluation is effective in the exhaustive identification of the concrete flaws of the interfaces of smart homes applications and generates a large quantity of objective information valuable for the improvement of the applications.