Weiser coined the term ubiquitous computing. He also gave a vision of people and environments augmented with computational resources that provide information and services when and where desired (Weiser, M. The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American. 265(3), 91-104, 1991). Dix et al. define ubiquitous computing as: “Any computing activity that permits human interaction away from a single workstation.” (Dix et al., 2003).
Published in Chapter:
Appropriating Heuristic Evaluation Methods for Mobile Computing
Enrico Bertini (DIUF - University of Fribourg, Switzerland), Tiziana Catarci (University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy), Alan Dix (Lancaster University, UK), Silvia Gabrielli (University of Udine, Italy), Stephen Kimani (Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya), and Giuseppe Santucci (University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-871-0.ch046
Abstract
Heuristic evaluation has proven popular for desktop and Web interfaces, both in practical design and as a research topic. Compared to full user studies, heuristic evaluation can be highly cost-effective, allowing a large proportion of usability flaws to be detected ahead of full development with limited resource investment. Mobile computing shares many usability issues with more conventional interfaces. However, it also poses particular problems for usability evaluation related to aspects such as limited screen real estate, intermittent user attention, and contextual factors. This chapter describes a modified collection of usability heuristics that are designed to be appropriate for evaluation in mobile computing. They have been systematically derived from extensive literature and empirically validated. They therefore offer a sound basis for heuristic-based evaluation in mobile computing. Besides introducing the reader to the practical use of heuristic evaluation, the chapter also closes with a description of potential future research in the area.