Skip to main content

Engineering the Development Process for User Interfaces: Toward Improving Usability of Mobile Applications

  • Conference paper
Digital Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications (DICTAP 2011)

Abstract

Mobile applications have a great proliferation nowadays. Their usage varies from personal applications to enterprise systems. Even though there has been proliferation, the development of mobile applications confronts some limitations and faces particular challenges. The usability is one of the main domains to attend in such systems. To improve this quality attribute we suggest incorporating to the software development process best practices from other disciplines, such as usability engineering and human-computer interaction. On the other hand, it’s important to incorporate studies that assist to identify requirements of each mobile device capability to offer services in usable manner. In this paper we present a proposal to apply user oriented analysis and design, emphasizing specific practices, such as user and task analysis. Also, we present a case of study consisting in a mobile application for the iPhone device, which allows us to prove our proposal.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Nilsson, E.G.: Design guidelines for mobile applications. SINTEF Report STF90A06003 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Serhani, M.A., Benharref, A., Dssouli, R., Mizouni, R.: Toward an Efficient Framework for Designing, Developing, and Using Secure Mobile Applications. International Journal of Human and Social Sciences 5(4), 272–278 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Wirth, N.: A Brief History of Software Engineering. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 30(3), 32–39 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Emmott, S., Rison, S.: Toward 2020 Science. Technical Report, Microsoft Research Cambridge (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Petrova, K.: Mobile learning as a mobile business application. International Journal of Innovation and Learning 4(1), 1–13 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Delic, N., Vukasinovic, A.: Mobile payment solution: Symbiosis between banks, application service providers and mobile network operators. In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG 2006), pp. 346–350. IEEE Computer Society Press, Las Vegas (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Gruhn, V.: University of Leipzig, Mobile Software Engineering, http://www.iasted.org/conferences/2007/innsbruck/se/pdfs/GruhnSE2007.pdf

  8. Harper, R., Rodden, T., Rogers, Y., Sellen, S.: Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020. Technical Report, Microsoft Research Cambridge (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Molina, J.P., González, P., Lozano, M.D., Montero, F., López-Jaquero, V.: Bridging the gap: Developing 2D and 3D user interfaces with the IDEAS methodology. In: Jorge, J.A., Jardim Nunes, N., Falcão e Cunha, J. (eds.) DSV-IS 2003. LNCS, vol. 2844, pp. 303–315. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Paspallis, N., Papadopoulos, G.A.: An Approach for Developing Adaptive, Mobile Appli-cations with Separation of Concerns. In: Thirtieth Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2006), pp. 299–306. IEEE Computer Society Press, Chicago (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Cheng, M.-C., Yuan, S.-M.: An adaptive mobile application development framework. In: Yang, L.T., Amamiya, M., Liu, Z., Guo, M., Rammig, F.J. (eds.) EUC 2005. LNCS, vol. 3824, pp. 765–774. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Lethbridge, T. C.: Integrating HCI and Usability into Software Engineering: The Imperative and the Resistance, http://www.capchi.org/documents/capchi_lethbridge_060927.pdf

  13. Nielsen, J.: The Usability Engineering Life Cycle. Computer 25(3), 12–22 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Knouf, N.A.: HCI for the real world. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI EA 2009, pp. 2255–2564. ACM Press, Boston (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Blevis, E.: Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 503–512. ACM, San Jose (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Kushniruk, A.W., Patel, V.L.: Cognitive and usability engineering methods for the evalua-tion of clinical information systems. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 37(1), 56–76 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Pimenta, M.S., Barthet, M.F.: Context Modeling for an Usability Oriented Approach to Interactive Systems Requirements Engineering. In: Proc. of IEEE International Symposium and Workshop on Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS 1996), pp. 315–321. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (1996)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Ferre, X.: Integration of Usability Techniques into the Software Development Process. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2003), IFIP, Portland, Oregon, pp. 28–35 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Walenstein, A.: Finding Boundary Objects in SE and HCI: An Approach Through Engineering-oriented Design Theories. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2003), IFIP, Portland, Oregon, USA, pp. 92–99 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Molina, J.P., González, P., Lozano, M.D., Montero, F., López-Jaquero, V.: Bridging the gap: Developing 2D and 3D user interfaces with the IDEAS methodology. In: Jorge, J.A., Jardim Nunes, N., Falcão e Cunha, J. (eds.) DSV-IS 2003. LNCS, vol. 2844, pp. 303–315. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Wania, C.E., Atwood, M.E., McCain, K.W.: How do design and evaluation interrelate in HCI research? In: Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, pp. 90–98. ACM, New York (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. García, J.D., Carretero, J., Pérez, J.M., García, F., Filgueira, R.: Specifying use case behavior with interaction models. Journal of Object Technology 2(2), 1–17 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Wang, S., Yilmaz, L.: A Strategy and Tool Support to Motivate the Study of Formal Meth-ods in Undergraduate Software Design and Modeling Courses. Int. J. Engineering Ed. 22(2), 407–418 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Seffa, A., Desmarais, M., Metzker, E.: HCI, Usability and Software Engineering Integra-tion: Present and Future. In: Autores, Libro (eds.) Human-Centered Software Engineering –Integrating Usability in the Software Development Lifecycle, Human-Computer. Series, vol. 8, II, pp. 37–57 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Seffah, A., Metzker, E.: The obstacles and myths of usability and software engineering. Communications of the ACM - The Blogosphere 47(12), 71–76 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Sousa, K., Furtado, E.: From usability tasks to usable user interfaces. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Task Models and Diagrams, pp. 103–110. ACM, Gdansk (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Golden, E.: Helping software architects design for usability. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems, EICS 2009, pp. 317–320. ACM Press, Pittsburgh (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Reeves, S.V.: Principled formal methods in HCI research. In: IEEE Colloquium on Formal Methods in HCI, vol. III, pp. 2/1 - 2/3. IEEE Explore, London (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Kim, S.-K., Carrington, D.: Integrating Use-Case Analysis and Task Analysis for Interactive Systems. In: Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2002), pp. 12–21. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Baillie, L.: Motivation for Writing the Paper: Designing Quick & Dirty Applications for Mobiles: Making the Case for the Utility of HCI Principles. Journal of Computing and Information Technology - CIT 18(2), 101–102 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Suzuki, S., Nakao, Y., Asahi, T., Bellotti, V., Yee, N., Fukuzumi, S.: Empirical comparison of task completion time between mobile phone models with matched interaction sequences. In: Jacko, J.A. (ed.) HCI International 2009. LNCS, vol. 5612, pp. 114–122. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  32. Bellotti, V., Fukuzumi, S., Asahi, T., Suzuki, S.: User-centered design and evaluation - the big picture. In: Proceedings of HCI International 2009, pp. 214–223. Springer, Berlin (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Kaiwar, D.: Building Enterprise Business Mobile Applications, http://www.trivium-esolutions.com/downloads/Enterprise%20Mobile%20Applications%20-%20White%20Paper.pdf

  34. Kohler, K., Paech, B.: Usability Engineering integrated with Requirements Engineering. In: Proceedings of ICSE 2003 Workshop on Bridging the Gaps Between Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, IFIP, Portland, Oregon, USA, pp. 36–40 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Zhang, P., Carey, J., Te’eni, D., Tremaine, M.: Integrating Human-Computer Interaction Development into System Development Life Cycle: A Methodology. Communications of the Association for Information Systems 15, 512–543 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Nielsen, J.: Finding usability problems through heuristic evaluation. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 373–380. ACM Press, New York (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Swain, D. E.: From Task Analysis to Use Cases, http://www.stc-carolina.org/wiki_attachments/SwainTRIDOCpresent.pdf

  38. Apple Inc.: iOS Human Interface Guidelines -User Experience, http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/MobileHIG.pdf

  39. Cartan, J.: iPad’s Natural User Interface at Work, http://blogs.oracle.com/usableapps/2010/07/ipads-natural-user-interface-a.html

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Juárez-Ramírez, R., Licea, G., Barriba, I., Izquierdo, V., Ángeles, A. (2011). Engineering the Development Process for User Interfaces: Toward Improving Usability of Mobile Applications. In: Cherifi, H., Zain, J.M., El-Qawasmeh, E. (eds) Digital Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications. DICTAP 2011. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 167. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22027-2_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22027-2_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22026-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22027-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics