Usable M-Commerce Systems: The Need of Model-Based Approaches

Abstract

Mobile solutions are becoming more and more common in e-commerce and are giving rise to a new breed of m-commerce systems, which are characterized, among other things, by strong demands on usability. This chapter discusses new challenges and possible solutions for developing and evolving usable m-commerce systems, with focus on model-based approaches. We have experienced these new challenges through several research and industrial projects on mobile solutions, usability and model-based approaches over the last years. In this chapter, we apply our experience to the emerging m-commerce field. We summarize the main challenges on how model-based approaches can support the development of usable m-commerce systems and indicate upcoming research issues in this very dynamic area. We argue that this research area is also timely, because the underlying technological infrastructure are just becoming sufficiently mature to make feasible research on personal, group and organizational issues, and not only on technical issues.