Evaluating the impact of changing contexts on mobile application usability within agile environments

Abstract

Mobile applications tend to be used in contexts that change over time. These varying contexts may impact the usability, and potentially the overall user experience, of mobile applications. However, the impact of context from a temporal perspective is not fully considered within usability evaluations. Consequently, this work focuses on a conceptual method that attempts to address this limitation. The proposed Contextual Usability Evaluation method promises to allow Human-Computer Interaction experts to evaluate the perceived impact of varying contexts over time on the usability of mobile applications. Despite the focus on context over time, the method is well suited to fast-paced Agile environments.