UTS research examining field workers' real-world use of mobile applications in industrial and logistical settings will establish new guidelines for mobile application design and assessment.
The study, commissioned by Retriever Communications and conducted by UTS researchers Dr Andrew Johnston and Michelle Pickrell, investigated investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of existing usability heuristics for mobile applications applied to the industrial sector.
Through observations and in-depth interviews, they identified several common issues technicians encounter when using mobile applications for organising and recording their activities. Observation included technicians in the telecom, delivery, elevator and dental equipment industries using mobile devices running on Android, iOS and Windows platforms, with both native and Web-based apps. Identifying specific issues faced by technicians using applications in the field, the research proposes a new set of heuristics specifically intended for mobile applications used by them.
Key Observations:
- Screen colour combinations must be designed for optimal field use
- Poor user experience remains a major deterrent to wider adoption
- Tablet and smartphone battery life is a fundamental driver of application success
- Effect of weather conditions on device and application reliability too often ignore
- Field workers need contextual / historical work information to support their work
- Reliable data capture and offline capabilities are critical
"There are a number of well-known interface design guidelines, or heuristics, but few are targeted specifically at mobile devices. This research is important because it is grounded in thorough examinations of users' actual, real-world use of mobile technology as they go about their daily work," said Dr Johnston.
"We often see developers and designers creating applications that are an extension of the backend platform and are therefore disconnected from the actual real-world experience of a field worker," said Mary Brittain-White, CEO, Retriever Communications. "The usability study provides an improved understanding of how field workers use mobile apps in real-world settings and the resulting heuristics aim to promote more intuitive interactions with field applications for increased productivity."
To confirm that offline capabilities remain a priority, connectivity issues most recently ranked as the number one challenge by IT, among 15 different IT issues in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program 'Uses of Mobile Information Technology Devices in the Field for Design, Construction, and Asset Management' (2016).