Abstract
Heuristic evaluation (HE) is problematic when applied to mobile technologies, in that contextual influences over use are poorly represented. Here we propose two lightweight variants of HE: the Heuristic Walkthrough (HW) combines HE with scenarios of use, and the Contextual Walkthrough (CW) involves conducting the HW in the field. 11 usability experts were asked to use one of these three approaches to evaluate a mobile device and the usability flaws discovered were compared across technique. HW discovered more critical usability flaws than HE. CW revealed some unique problems relating to I/O and ambient lighting not encountered in the other two approaches. Though contextualizing heuristic evaluation improves the assessment of mobile devices, it appears that it is possible to introduce contextual detail, i.e. to bridge the ’realism gap’, with scenarios rather than expensive in-situ testing.
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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Po, S., Howard, S., Vetere, F., Skov, M.B. (2004). Heuristic Evaluation and Mobile Usability: Bridging the Realism Gap. In: Brewster, S., Dunlop, M. (eds) Mobile Human-Computer Interaction - MobileHCI 2004. Mobile HCI 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3160. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-28637-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-28637-0_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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