The MUG-10 Framework for Preventing Usability Issues in Mobile Application Development

Nowadays, mobile applications are essential tools for everyday life, providing users with anytime, anywhere access to up-to-date information, communication, and entertainment. Needless to say, hardware limitations and the diverse needs of different user groups pose a number of design and development challenges. According to recent studies, usability is one of the most revealing among many others. However, few have made the direct effort to provide and discuss what countermeasures can be applied to avoid usability issues in mobile application development. Through a survey of 20 mobile software design and development practitioners, this study aims to fill this research gap. Given the qualitative nature of the data collected, and with the goal of capturing and preserving the intrinsic meanings embedded in the experts’ statements, we adopted in vivo coding. The analysis of the collected material enabled us to develop a novel framework consisting of ten guidelines and three activities with general applications. In addition, it can be noted that active collaboration with users in testing and collecting feedback was often emphasized at each stage of mobile application development. Future research should consider focused action research that evaluates the effectiveness of our recommendations and validates them across different stakeholder groups. In this regard, the development of automated tools to support early detection and mitigation of usability issues during mobile application development could also be considered.