International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)

Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com

Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 247


Abstract: Software usability is very important factor in
evaluating the quality of software product and it also affect
the success of a project development. There are several area
of the software engineering in which we can use the usability
as the major constraint like project planning, project
construction, software implementation etc. The importance of
usability evaluation becomes critical in the early stage of the
software life cycle because there are lots of products or
applications with similar functionality are available in the
market. The scale of on-line markets, users typically face the
choice between the applications with similar functionality.
Thus developers need to develop high quality application in
order to be competitive. In software development, so for the
accuracy and efficiency of software usability evaluation is
very important in software development. In this paper, we
represent some mathematical formulas which effectively and
accurately calculate the usability factors.
In this paper, we have developed a software usability
evaluation tool (i.e. Usability Analyzer Tool) that helps in
software development organizations to calculate the usability
factors. The purpose of this paper is to describe a
recommended process to develop a tool which measures the
software usability for the big organization. These approaches
generally followed by the usability evaluation professionals.

Keywords: Usability, Human Computer Interaction,
Usability factors, Usability evaluation methods, Usability
testing of android application, Usability Analyzer Tool.

1. INTRODUCTION
Software usability is a major factor in judging the quality
of any software or product. The entire software quality
model has examined the usability as one of the most
significant measure of evaluating the performance of any
software. Usability metric is a well known metric to
estimate the attractiveness, understand- ability and learn-
ability, operability of the software products and it is a part
of software metric. Software metric is a measure of some
property of a piece of software or its specifications.

Software metrics deals with the measurement of the
software product and the process by which it is developed
[20].
A software or product is considered usable, if it has a
pleasant or acceptable user interface, easy to use and
works as our judgement [6]. Usability is a quality attribute
of the usage of an application. From the users point of
view it can be described as how effectively, efficiently,
safe a user can accomplish tasks of a good utility that are
easy to learn and it can easily to memorize (usability
goals). Usability can be enhanced by expert design of the
user interface, and, as importantly, by careful design of
user system interactions.
Usability evaluation is a very essential technique to
estimate the function of human-computer interaction
(HCI).In HCI we measure the factors which comes during
the interaction of computer system. HCI is an interactive
system which shows the interaction between human and
the computer. Among interactive system developers and
users there is now much agreement that usability is an
important measure of software systems [1]. Usability is a
recent, but sometimes very critical and an abstract idea in
human and computer interaction field.
According to Jakob Nielsen, usability is defined by the
following 5 quality components [23]:
Learn-ability: How fast can users learn working
with a certain interface and how easy is it for them to do
more or less complex tasks when working with the
interface for the very first time?
Efficiency: How fast are users in accomplishing
different tasks once they have internalized the
functionality of the interface design?
Memorability: When users have not worked with the
interface for a longer time, how much of its functionality
do they remember and how fast can they regain their
proficiency?
Errors: Do users make many errors when working
with the interface? Are those severe errors and can they
easily cope with them?
Satisfaction: How satisfied are users after working
with the interface concerning the time they had to invest?
Was the interface pleasant to use?

Software usability evaluation is an approach to estimate
the usability for every project or mobile product. Usability
metrics included the following factors: efficiency,
effectiveness, productivity, satisfaction, learn-ability,
attractiveness, operability, accuracy, and response
time [2] of every software project. Web based application
or software product or even mobile application is needed
usability estimation which shows the software usefulness.
The proposed tool i.e. Usability Analyzer Tool
developed in java, this tool is used to two different
purposes, first to calculate the usability of android based
application & secondly, to make the comparison between
different similar kinds of android application based on
USABILITY ANALYZER TOOL: A
USABILITY EVALUATION TOOL FOR
ANDROID BASED MOBILE APPLICATION

Babita Shivade
1
, Meena Sharma
2


1,2
DAVV University, IET-DAVV, Khandwa Road,
Indore (M.P.) , India
International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 248


usability criteria. Most of the software's fails due to their
attractiveness, understand- ability and learn-ability,
operability of the software & so on. Usability metric is a
well known metric to estimate the attractiveness,
understand- ability and learn-ability, operability,
productivity of the software products.
For any application or software product, usability is a
necessary condition for survival. If a application product
or software product is inconvenient to use, people dont
want to use that product. If the product fails or discarded,
due to their uselessness, so peoples are not interested in
that product and people leave. There are lots of similar
products available in the market, so usability is very
important factor for any software development.
According to various user, lost of applications are
frequently used in daily life. This makes the usability
more important in the application quality. As a result,
companies are realizing the advantage of designing and
developing products in a usability-oriented manner rather
than a purely functionality-oriented manner [8].
1) First, as the competition is growing on mobile
application markets, its very important for a
developers team to launch their product before
competitors release their product.
2) Second, mobile applications are usually
developed in comparatively small scale projects
which may not be able to support extensive and
expensive usability testing.
3) Developers team are not able to find the root the
cause of usability defects, if they perform
usability testing after completion of the product.

We have explained the usability analyzer tool is
organized as follows. In section I, we explained the
introduction. In section II, we present the background and
related work. . In section III, we have explained the
working of the proposed tool. In section IV, we have
explained the usability analyzer tool with experimental
results. Finally we conclude the paper in section V.

2. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK
The purpose of this study is to make the mobile
application more familiar with users, because mobile
application is used by the common users as well as the
technical users. The technical person knows very well
how to use application but non technical person dont
know. There are lots of mobile applications available in
the market which is used for several purposes like
calculating, games, alarms, educational purposes etc. So
the usability evaluation is the one of the major goal of the
software project development process. If the software is
more usable than it is used by the lots of users otherwise
not.
There are various testing strategy available for mobile
application like usability testing, compatibility testing,
Interface Testing, Services testing, Low Level Resource
Testing, Performance Testing, Operational Testing,
Security Testing. The important challenges and risks
involved in mobile application testing can impact
production of mobile applications [14]. Testing methods
which measure efficiency, effectiveness, ease of learning
and user satisfaction have been developed to take these
usability principles into account like Simplicity,
Naturalness, Consistency, Efficient Interactions,
Forgiveness and Feedback, Effective Use of Language
[13].
The usability engineering is an area which deals with the
user requirement specification. Generally for evaluating
software usability we uses the three following techniques
[11]:-
1) Usability Inspection: In Usability Inspection
approach, usability-related aspects of a user
interface examined by the usability experts and
sometimes software developers, users and other
professionals.
2) Usability Testing: In Usability Testing approach,
firstly we work on the prototype model of the
actual system and test it to check whether the
system is working as per the user specification or
not and also checks the user interface support the
users to do their tasks.
3) Usability Inquiry: In Usability Inquiry approach,
evaluator observes the users likes, dislike, their
needs and understanding about the system through
the observation or asking questionnaires. The
evaluator note down this interview in written form
or store in mind verbally.
These usability techniques are also divided into subpart
which is summarized in Figure. 1.


Figure 1 Usability evaluation methods

The objective of this tool is to produce the accurate result
of software usefulness based on the feedbacks given by
real users. In Usability Testing users are given tasks to
perform using the product and observed to see if they
have any problems performing the tasks. Users perform
the tasks on the application that we want to test. Real
International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 249


users/ programmer(s)/tester(s) should be considered for
usability testing. Architecture of the proposed Usability
Analyzer tool is given in Figure. 2


Figure 2 Architecture of the proposed Usability Analyzer
Tool

3. WORKING OF THE PROPOSED TOOL
The proposed evaluation tool (i.e. Usability Analyzer
Tool) represented diagrammatically in figure 2. A
Usability evaluation tool enable us to measure the
software usability from the real users view points and
produce the accurate result of software usefulness based
on the feedbacks given by real users. The main
perspective of the project can be summarized as follows:
1. Build four android applications for usability
testing with the help of ADT.
2. A user uses this application and gives their
responses in the form of feedback.
3. This responses store in the databases in the form
of numerical values.
4. Then usability analyzer tool fetches this values
form the databases
5. Now usability calculation is done based on the
certain formulas
6. Now we are able to generate the usability graph
also comparison graph for similar type of
android application, by which we can show
which application is most liked by the user.
This tool provides the following usability factors which
we are measuring in this project:
1. Effectiveness
2. Efficiency
3. Attractiveness
4. Productivity
5. Response Time
6. Understand ability

3.1 Usability Evaluation of Android Application
For usability evaluation of Android applications, we have
considered 4 applications, out of these 4 applications 2
applications are similar and other remaining 2
applications are similar type but there is some difference
in their functionality, their appearance as well as their
difficulty level. Now we have gone through the usage of
all the applications and take the feedback from the
evaluator based on some questionnaires and we also
generate some logs to evaluate the usability of these four
android apps.
In usability evaluation of android application we have
considered 2 basis method of usability evaluation that is:
Questionnaire and Logging which comes under the
usability inquiry approach.
Questionnaire: In this type of method we asked certain
question from the user and they give some answer. This
method is very cheap as comparison to other to usability
evaluation method. Basically in this method we form or
design certain question to take review or feedback from
the user and according to this question set we decide the
usability of the software.
Logging: This method automatically collects all the
statistics about the user and the system interaction and the
detailed use of the systems. It is very useful because it
show the actual use of the system. It contains some log
file which records all the data about each event related to
every user interface. Typically, an interface log will
contain statistics about the frequency with which each
user has used each feature in the program and the
frequency with which various events of interest (such as
error messages) have occurred.
In this project we have considered 4 android applications
For Usability Evaluation:
1. Alarm Clock 1
2. Alarm Clock 2
3. GK Test 1
4. GK Test 2
There are four parts for each application
1. Usage of an application
2. Feedback Questionnaires
3. Usability Evaluation using Formula's
4. Making Usability Graph and Comparison Graph
3.1.1 Usage of an Application
In this section basically we describe the usage of an
application. All the application which is built in this
proposed tool is a general purpose application and their
way of usage is similar as the other mobile application,
but some differences is there.
3.1.2 Feedback Questionnaires
In this section we will discuss about the feedback
question, which we are using for the above all android
application. By this feedback question we are measuring
the usability of android application which we considered
for this project. The entire feedback questions is related to
some factor like productivity, efficiency, effectiveness,
attractiveness, response time and understand ability. This
factor comes under the usability metrics. So with the help
International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 250


of these questions we finally measure the usability of any
software product. These questions are calculated based on
some mathematical formulas which we will discuss later
on in this report. So the Feedback Question lists are as
follows:
1. Is the response time of application satisfactory
(Response Time)
2. Are the symbols and icons user friendly
(Understand-ability)
3. Is the application improving your
productivity.(Productivity)
4. Is the application interaction user friendly
(Attractiveness)
5. Is the design of user interaction help in
effectiveness of work (Effectiveness)
6. Is the design of the user interaction
efficient.(Efficiency)
This question is frame in android application which
contains 5 options for each question ranging from 1 to 5.
1 means strongly disagree and 5 means strongly agree
and 2 to 4 are the intermediate values. The feedback form
is shown in Figure .3


Figure 3 Feedback form for android application

3.1.3 Usability Evaluation using Formula's
In these we will discuss about the usability factors which
we are considering in this project. Firstly we will define
those factors and secondly how we calculate these factors
using certain formulas [3, 15].
1. Response Time: What is the time taken to
complete the specified task?
T= (time of gaining the result)-(time of
command entry finished)
2. Understand-ability: Whatever user can
understand how to select a software product that
is suitable for their intended user and how it can
be used for particular tasks.
Y=C/D
C= Number of user interface functions whose
purpose is understood by the user.
D= Number of user interface functions
0<=Y<=1, the closer to 1 the better.
3. Effectiveness: The capability of software
product to enable users to achieve specified tasks
with accuracy and completeness in specified
context of use.
Eff = 50% Comp + 50% Accu
Accu=Accuracy
Comp=Completeness
4. Efficiency: The amount of resources expended
in relation to the accuracy and completeness with
which the user achieves a goal. How user achieve
each task efficiently.
Efficiency=Task Effectiveness/Task Time
5. Attractiveness: The capability of assessing the
appearance of the software, and will be
influenced by factors such as screen design and
color.
Questionnaire to assess the attractiveness of the
interface to users, taking account of attributes
such as color and graphical design.

Attractiveness=No. of element should be
modified/total no. Of element in app
6. Learn-ability: The capability of the software
product to enable the user to learn its
application. Ease of function learning: How long
does the user take to learn to use function?
T= Mean time taken to learn to use a
function correctly
0<T The shorter is the better.
7. Task Time: Record how long it takes a user to
complete a task in seconds and or minutes. Start
task times when users finish reading task
scenarios and end the time when users have
finished all actions.
Task Time=start time/finish time
8. Productivity: Productivity is the ratio of output
to inputs in production..
Development Productivity = Development
project size (in Functions) /Development
effort (in hours)

3.2 Usability Analyzer Tool
In this section we basically show how we are Making
Usability Graph and Comparison Graph with the help of
Usability Analyzer Tool.
All the application has its usability value associated with
usability measure. If the organization wants to check the
product usability they can check in the form of graph and
they can also check the previous result of the particular
product and they come to know that which type of
usability problems they are facing and how they can
improve the product usability.
Figure.4 shows the usability graph based on the feedback
value getting from the users of any one application and
Figure 5 shows the usability comparison graph. All the
data which we got from this tool are summarized in the
experimental result table which will shown in next
section.
International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 251


Figure 4 Usability Test Result for an android application
generated by the tool


Figure 5 Comparison Usability Test Result for an android
application generated by the tool

4. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
In this section we have presented how the proposed
Usability Analyzer Tool would be useful to estimate the
usability in software as well as estimate the usability of
different type of software and the result range of the
whole project is ranging from 0 to 1 and calculation has
done within this range in the form of:
0<usability factor<1
If usability factor is near to 1 i.e. software or product is
more usable, else if it is very close to 0 i.e. software is not
more usable, means users are not very much interested in
this application.
All the usability metrics which we are discussing in this
paper like effectiveness, efficiency, productivity,
understandability, learn-ability and attractiveness
calculated based on formulas. In this project, we have
considered 4 android applications this application is used
by users and at the end of application they give feedback.
Feedback form of an android application is already shown
in fig.3. The entire questions have such type of pattern as
shown in figure 6.


Figure 6 Feedback answer pattern
When user chooses any one of the above option, value
according to particular option is store in database and the
calculations perform on these value using formulas. Some
of the values already assume constant for calculation.
The results for the given android application that we got
from the proposed Usability Analyzer Tool are
summarized in table I, II, III and IV.

Table I: Usability Calculated Data for Alarm Clock 1
S.n
o
Effecti
ven-ess
Efficien-
cy
Attract
-
iveness
Under
s-tand
-
ability
Respon
-se
Time
Prod
uc-
tivity
1 1.0% 1.0% 0.834% 1.0% 126sec 0.3%
2 0.6% 0.75% 1.0% 0.8% 128sec 0.375
%
3 0.2% 0.337% 0.166% 0.2% 207sec 0.75%

Table II: Usability Calculated Data for Alarm Clock 2
S.no Effectiv
en-ess
Efficien
-cy
Attract
-iveness
Under
s-
tand-
ability
Respon
-se
Time
Produc-
tivity
1 1.0% 1.0% 0.66% 0.66% 80sec 0.375%
2 0.8% 0.8% 0.833% 0.8% 60sec 0.375%
3 0.6% 0.6% 0.833% 1.0% 100sec 0.3%
Table III: Usability Calculated Data for GK Test 1
S.
no
Effec
tiven-
ess
Efficien-
cy
Attract-
iveness
Unders-
tand-
ability
Respon-
se Time
Produ
c-
tivity
1 1.0% 1.0% 0.833% 1.0% 100sec 0.3%
2 0.8% 1.0% 0.66% 1.0% 60sec 0.3%
3 0.5% 0.625% 0.66% 1.0% 192sec 0.3%

Table IV: Usability Calculated Data for GK Test 2
S.n
o
Effectiv
en-ess
Efficie
n-cy
Attract
-iveness
Unders-
tand-
ability
Respon-
se Time
Produ
c-
tivity
1 0.8% 1.0% 0.66% 1.0% 60sec 0.3%
2 0.2% 0.333% 0.166% 0.2% 194sec 0.95%
3 0.8% 0.8% 0.833% 0.8% 60sec 0.37%

5. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have proposed usability evaluation tool
i.e. Usability Analyzer Tool. It is a web based
application which evaluates the usability of android
application, based on certain usability factors like
attractiveness, efficiency, effectiveness, productivity,
understandability and response time. It is a very simple
tool which calculates the systems usability with the help
of formulas. In this system we have selected graph for
showing the output because it will be easily
understandable.
International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 252


More specifically, this system is designed for developer as
well as the users, who want to test their product usability
and also want to compare particular application with
other application with similar functionality. Using this
software, many organizations can improve their
productivity and adaptability of software. It provides a
common platform for all the organization and the
researcher who wants to work on this area. The
advantages of this software are:
This tool will facilitate the early detection of usability
defects of android apps
Since the quality of the software is checked before
deploying the software, the quality of the software will be
assured
So it will reduce development costs as well as
maintenance costs.
In future, there is scope of increasing the usability factors
in this software like satisfaction, accessibility, safety etc.
and also there is a scope of getting good result from fuzzy
calculation. Other possibilities for adding more android
application for usability testing.

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