Factors influencing the perceived usability of mobile applications
Pawel Weichbroth
TL;DR
This study addresses how users perceive the usability of mobile applications by empirically evaluating eight factors drawn from the PACMAD+3 model. It operationalizes these factors into observable features and administers a 46-item, five-point Likert questionnaire to 838 participants, providing reliability-supported evidence on factor influence. The results identify efficiency as the strongest driver of perceived usability, with the remaining seven factors (cognitive load, errors, learnability, operability, effectiveness, memorability, and understandability) rated as moderately important. The work contributes a concrete, observable operationalization of PACMAD+3 for mobile apps and offers practical guidance for UX designers and QA engineers, while highlighting the need for context-aware and future-oriented usability research.
Abstract
The advent of mobile applications has brought new frontiers to usability studies. So far, the ongoing research has undertaken considerable efforts to model usability in such new challenging context. One of these endeavors is the PACMAD+3 model, which consists of a total of ten unique factors. However, to the best of our knowledge, little or no effort has been made to empirically evaluate these factors against perceived influence. With this in mind, the objective of this study is to explore this issue by evaluating the selected factors. To achieve this goal in a reliable and reproducible manner, we took advantage of previous attempts to conceptualize the mobile usability factors, but we contribute by operationalizing these theoretical constructs into observable and measurable phenomena. In this sense, the survey was designed and carried out on the sample of 838 users in order to evaluate the significance of the PACMAD+3 factors on the perceived usability of mobile applications. Our findings show that, on average, users rated efficiency as highly important, while the remaining seven, namely: cognitive load, errors, learnability, operability, effectiveness, memorability, and understandability, were rated as moderately important. The discussed results provide insight into the importance of usability attributes and quality criteria from both perspectives, ultimately facilitating and securing the design and development of mobile applications. Therefore, our research contributes to the field of human-computer interaction, with both theoretical and practical implications for mobile usability researchers, UX designers, and quality assurance engineers.