skip to main content
10.1145/3609987.3609996acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschigreeceConference Proceedingsconference-collections
short-paper

Usability testing and redesign of a mobile application for real estate

Authors Info & Claims
Published:27 September 2023Publication History

ABSTRACT

The real estate industry is witnessing a growing trend of using mobile applications for property searches, fueled by the rising popularity of mobile technology. However, despite the widespread adoption of these apps on a global scale, their usage, especially within the Greek market, has not been adequately evaluated, particularly concerning their usability and user experience aspects. The study investigates the usability assessment of "Spitogatos", a popular real estate application in Greece. A representative group of 10 users was involved in the research, to assess the convenience and efficiency of the property search and securing process within the application. The testing phase revealed several usability issues, primarily related to features such as location search, editing search results, saving and removing properties, and applying filters. The analysis of user feedback and observations also revealed challenges with certain screens lacking a clear visual hierarchy, causing confusion and frustration among users. Based on the findings, several recommendations are proposed to enhance the application's usability, including a user interface revamp of eleven screens. Finally, the study discusses the importance of incorporating iterative usability testing into the design process, future research directions and acknowledges its limitations.

Skip Supplemental Material Section

Supplemental Material

References

  1. Alain Abran, Adel Khelifi, Witold Suryn, and Ahmed Seffah. 2003. Usability Meanings and Interpretations in ISO Standards. Software Quality Journal 11, 4: 325–338. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025869312943Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Akeju, M.A., Olapade, D.T. and Babatunde, T.O. 2021. Awareness and Usage of Mobile Technology in Real Estate Practice in Developing Countries: The Case of Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria. International Journal of Real Estate Studies. 15, 1 (Jun. 2021), 63–71. DOI:https://doi.org/10.11113/intrest.v15n1.9.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  3. Fani Avdela, 2022. Usability Testing and Redesign of a Mobile Application for Real Estate. Master's thesis. International Hellenic University (IHU), Thermi, Thessaloniki, Greece. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11544/30011Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Nikolaos Avouris, Nikolaos Tselios, Christos Fidas, and Eleftherios Papachristos. 2003. Website Evaluation: A Usability-Based Perspective. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-38076-0_15Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  5. Ba, Shusong and Yang, Xianling. 2016. What Changes Has the Internet Brought to the Real Estate Brokerage Industry? In “Internet Plus” Pathways to the Transformation of China's Property Sector. Springer Singapore, Singapore, 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1699-8_3Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  6. Ba, Shusong and Yang, Xianling. 2016. Zillow—Online Media Tycoon in US Real Estate Brokerage Industry. In “Internet Plus” Pathways to the Transformation of China's Property Sector. Springer Singapore, Singapore, 67–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1699-8_6Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  7. Raluca Budiu, 2014. Usability Testing for Mobile Is Easy. Nielsen Norman Group. (February 2014) Retrieved November 22, 2021 from http://www. nngroup com/articles/mobile-usability-testingGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Raluca Budiu 2017. Quantitative vs. Qualitative Usability Testing. (October 2017). Retrieved December 8, 2021 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/quant-vs-qual/Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. Emna Cherif and Delvin Grant. 2014. Analysis of e-business models in real estate. Electronic Commerce Research 14, 1: 25–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-013-9126-zGoogle ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  10. Comscore Mobile Metrix. 2014. 25-34 Year-Olds are the Heaviest Mobile App Users in U.S. Retrieved April 29, 2023 from https://www.comscore.com/chi/Insights/Infographics/25-34-Year-Olds-are-the-Heaviest-Mobile-App-Users-in-USGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. Laura Faulkner. 2003. Beyond the five-user assumption: Benefits of increased sample sizes in usability testing. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 35, 3: 379–383. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195514Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  12. Saul Greenberg and Bill Buxton. 2008. Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time). In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 111–120. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357074Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  13. Wonil Hwang and Gavriel Salvendy. 2010. Number of people required for usability evaluation: the 10±2 rule. Commun. ACM 53, 5 (May 2010), 130–133. https://doi.org/10.1145/1735223.1735255Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  14. Investopedia. Are You Ready to Buy a House? Retrieved April 22, 2023 from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/10/ready-to-buy-house.aspGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Investopedia. National Association of Realtors (NAR). Retrieved April 22, 2023 from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/national-association-of-realtors.aspGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Kasper Hornbæk and Erik Frøkjær. 2005. Comparing usability problems and redesign proposals as input to practical systems development. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '05). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 391–400. https://doi.org/10.1145/1054972.1055027Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. Anne Kaikkonen, Aki Kekäläinen, Mihael Cankar, Titti Kallio, and Anu Kankainen. 2005. Usability testing of mobile applications: a comparison between laboratory and field testing. J. Usability Studies 1, 1 (November 2005), 4–16.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Veronika Lang and Peter Sittler. 2011. Looking for property via Smartphone, trends, offers and prospects. In 18. European Real Estate Society Conference (ERES), 15–18. https://doi.org/10.15396/eres2011_49Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  19. Veronika Lang and Peter Sittler. 2012. Real estate applications for smartphones: A market overview for Austria and Germany. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arz/wpaper/eres2012_130.htmlGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. Ritch Macefield. 2009. How to specify the participant group size for usability studies: a practitioner's guide. J. Usability Studies 5, 1 (November 2009), 34–45.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  21. Nielsen, J. (1993). Usability Engineering. Academic Press. New YorkGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. Virpi Roto, Marianna Obrist, and Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila. 2009. User experience evaluation methods in academic and industrial contexts. Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, May 2014: 1–5.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  23. Jeff Sauro and Joseph S. Dumas. 2009. Comparison of three one-question, post-task usability questionnaires. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1599–1608. https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518946Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. Peter Sittler. 2015. The user satisfaction and usability of the Austrian land register real estate app “LexioMobil.” In 22nd Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. https://doi.org/10.15396/eres2015_250Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  25. Spitogatos. 2023. https://www.spitogatos.gr/en/page/aboutUsGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Anna M. Wichansky. 2000. Usability testing in 2000 and beyond. Ergonomics 43, 7: 998–1006. https://doi.org/10.1080/001401300409170Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  27. Dongsong Zhang, Boonlit Adipat, and Dongsong Zhang. 2016. Challenges, Methodologies , and Issues in the Usability Testing of Mobile Applications Challenges , Methodologies , and Issues in the Usability Testing of Mobile Applications. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 18, 3: 293–308. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327590ijhc1803_3Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref

Index Terms

  1. Usability testing and redesign of a mobile application for real estate

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Login options

        Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

        Sign in
        • Published in

          cover image ACM Other conferences
          CHIGREECE '23: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the ACM Greek SIGCHI Chapter
          September 2023
          218 pages
          ISBN:9798400708886
          DOI:10.1145/3609987

          Copyright © 2023 ACM

          Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

          Publisher

          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 27 September 2023

          Permissions

          Request permissions about this article.

          Request Permissions

          Check for updates

          Qualifiers

          • short-paper
          • Research
          • Refereed limited
        • Article Metrics

          • Downloads (Last 12 months)35
          • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

          Other Metrics

        PDF Format

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader

        HTML Format

        View this article in HTML Format .

        View HTML Format