A Systematic Review on Usability Evaluation Methods for M-Commerce Apps

Abstract

There are several literatures pertaining to the usability of mobile commerce (m-commerce) applications, however, these literatures do not sufficiently address issues about usability methods or adequately provide knowledge concerning usability methods used in most of the empirical usability evaluation for applications in m-commerce. Hence, this paper attempts to review available literatures with the aim of capturing the usability techniques commonly or frequently used in the domain of usability evaluation for applications in m-commerce. To achieve the stated research goal, the study applied systematic literature review methodology. Sixty seven (67) papers in the area of usability evaluation for m-commerce apps were downloaded. Out of these papers, twenty one (21) most relevant studies were selected for review in order to extract the appropriate information needed for the analysis. The results from the review reveal that heuristic evaluation, formal test and think-aloud methods are the most commonly utilized methods in m-commerce application usability evaluation compared to the cognitive walkthrough and informal test methods. In addition, most of the studies applied control experiment (33.30% of the total reviewed studies); other studies that applied case study in usability evaluation make up 14.28%. However, most of the studies reviewed, lacked comprehensive framework to demonstrate the applicability of other usability methods in m-commerce domain such as survey and field study. The results from this paper provide additional knowledge for usability practitioners, designers, developers, and the research community to know the current usability methods applied in m-commerce application evaluation.