According to the research performed, an application is considered bad if it does not conform to standards. As per the findings of the surveys, there are many reasons that lead to the failure of a mobile phone application. An application can fail due to poor design/user interface, inefficiency in addressing a specific issue, inconsistency across various platforms, security issues, consumption of battery power and failure to meet requirements of the users. As the number of applications is increasing the number of failed applications is also growing. The paper suggests solutions to avoid the failure of the applications by designing the interface by collecting the user requirements through surveys/research and developing the application with adequate training [26].
User interface along with functionality is an important aspect of a product that determines success. An interface is much more than the device the user interacts with the application. Dialogues and style of interaction between the user and application is very important. Dialogues can be in the form of question and answers, command language, menus, forms or iconic representations. This helps the developers to employ the requirements of the users in the design. While designing an interface, Gould and Lewis’s three fundamental principles should be taken into consideration as it focuses on the user needs and a room for changes based on feedback . These principles are: 1) early and continual focus on users and their activities 2) empirical measurement of usage which is also known as usability testing 3) incremental design. The study demonstrates the importance of user interface and motivates the developers to incorporate the concepts of UI while developing and designing a product.[27].
Usability research involves observing people which help to achieve thorough understanding of the needs, goals and the activities of people who use the application and documentation that is to be designed and developed. Research through inquiry is mainly done in the form of dialogues where ongoing data can be fetched instead of summary data. Few issues and concerns can be gathered through inquiry sessions. Interview is performed through question answer format which allows the researcher to gather broader information regarding the use and problems of the application. The study shows that an effective research can be performed through inquiry, interviewing and through usability testing. [17].
According to The UX Playbook, User Interview is one of the best way to understand user’s mind. It is possible to derive insights by understanding the mind and needs of the user []. It is very important to understand your audience before you design for them. Users don’t directly convey what kind of design they expect, but they guide our design decisions by sharing their pain points and their expectations of the solution [4]. We, the user researchers should put ourselves into the users shoes to understand their behavior. When we interview people, it’s essential to observe their characteristics and their experiences. People see and evaluate things according to their situations. So the authors are of the opinion that while interviewing we should pay close attention to not only what they are saying but also to their state of mind while evaluating the interface [5].
User Centered Method is defined as a design philosophy and a process in which the needs and limitations of the end user of the application is given the most attention at every stage of the design method [11]. “UCD is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks, and environments; is driven and refined by user-centered evaluation; and addresses the whole user experience” [7]. Observing and probing which is a UCD method help the researchers to gather contextual data. This method gathers data on appearance, user interface, environment and interaction. So issues related to personal aspect of the users are not revealed. Whereas probing gathers data on user personality, product meaning and the environment. It covers various aspects of user experience. There are some issues which cannot be revealed using observation technique [6]. So it depends on the kind of product we are analyzing.
According to the study, User- centered prototype evaluation enables the researcher to distinguish the good from bad and helps to make innovations. It also helps to understand the User Interface in relation to the application’s purpose for its audience and target application design for improving the user experience. The authors believe that new design ideas are often infused by studying the innovations done by the competitors or by studying the users of the previous version of the application. Prototyping can also be useful when pen and paper are not able to interpret the patterns. Prototyping information interpretation can be helpful to communicate design ideas. This information visualization can further aid in inculcating the application with new aesthetics, utility and satisfaction [16].
The advantages of Usability testing to identify potential problems has been published in a paper by the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Conducting Usability Testing before taking the product into development phase can help to identify potential use- related problems [13]. This is because making improvements to the design after developing it takes a lot of effort, time and resources which makes it expensive. This study demonstrates the advantages of usability testing during the development phase [1]. In order to understand all of the user’s pain points, it is important to observe each and every interaction in detail. This can be done by recording user’s interaction with the interface and later analyzing it. Various ways are used to record user interactions with the UI on a mobile phone which include recording through camera or screen recorder [3]. Attaching a camera to the mobile phone for recording user interactions could hinder the usability of the application and lead to misinterpreted results. According to the authors, video-recording the sessions of the participants helps to keep legitimate information needed for designing the product [2].
Paper is a favored medium for note-taking. Notes in the form of notepads, Post-Its or loos scraps can help to record the strong and negative reactions of the participants. This study conducted by researchers shows that note taking is one of the effective methods to capture information about an event or an experience [14]. There are various common problems that occur during usability testing. Some of which are usability testing reporting and note taking. Many a times, during the test, third party such as a note-taker gets involved by intervening the facilitator and the participant to prove a point. This research demonstrates the reasons that can lead to data mismatch when compared to the database [8]. Note-taking is one of the themes that can be used to improve the usability test sessions. Videos provide meaningful information by playing the role of digital extension to the researcher’s human memory. Creating video summaries from the recorded videos can be challenging. Smartphone accelerometer data can be used to identify interesting scenes from the videos. Study conducted shows that valuable insights and qualitative feedback can be gained from the questionnaires [18]. Recording persuasive video clips and capturing issues of the participants can help to improve the note-taking method during usability testing. This can lead to reliable and valid data [9].