Evaluating Mobile Applications: A Spreadsheet Case Study

The power of mobile devices has increased dramatically in the last few years. These devices are becoming more sophisticated and allow users to accomplish a wide variety of tasks while on the move. The ease with which mobile apps can be created and distributed has resulted in a number of usability issues becoming more prevalent. This paper describes the range of usability issues encountered at all stages of the mobile app life cycle, from when users begin to search for an app to when they finally remove the app from their device. Using these results we developed a number of guidelines for both app developers and app platform developers that will improve the overall usability of mobile apps.