Development of Usability Guidelines: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Usability guideline is a well-established topic of study, with numerous guidelines developed over the years. There is a lack of study that provides a comprehensive overview of the development of usability guidelines. Motivated by this shortcoming, a systematic review was conducted to establish a body of knowledge on the development of usability guidelines to assist researchers working in the field. The systematic review was conducted by analyzing forty-three (43) research papers selected from seven (7) digital libraries and assessed to identify; the current state of research, specific domains, data collection techniques, development methods, and validation techniques. The results showed an increasing research trend in the development of usability guidelines. The development of usability guidelines was undertaken in many different domains, where the medical domain recorded the highest number of activities. Literature survey is the dominant data collection technique for developing usability guidelines, while usability evaluation is the most common technique for validating newly developed guidelines. The findings concluded that there is a lack of standardization for developing, implementing, and evaluating usability guidelines. Future work can be carried out to establish a methodology for developing and implementing usability guidelines. Moreover, a tool can also be built using machine learning to develop usability guidelines automatically.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Munil Shiva Goundar

Munil Shiva Goundar is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Fiji National University. His research interest includes human-computer interaction and mobile learning. He is currently pursuing his PhD in the field of human-computer interaction.

Bimal Aklesh Kumar

Bimal Aklesh Kumar is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Fiji National University. His research interest includes human-computer interaction, context-awareness, mobile learning and software engineering.

A B M Shawkat Ali

A B M Shawkat Ali is a Professor of Data Science at The University of Fiji and a Data Scientist Consultant for the industry. For over 25 years, he has been working in universities across Asia, Australia and South Pacific in the area of Computer Science.