Usability of mobile applications: literature review and rationale for a new usability model

The usefulness of mobile devices has increased greatly in recent years allowing users to perform more tasks in amobile context. This increase in usefulness has come at the expense of the usability of these devices in somecontexts. We conducted a small review of mobile usability models and found that usability is usually measured interms of three attributes; effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Other attributes, such as cognitive load, tend tobe overlooked in the usability models that are most prominent despite their likely impact on the success or failureof an application. To remedy this we introduces the PACMAD (People At the Centre of Mobile ApplicationDevelopment) usability model which was designed to address the limitations of existing usability models whenapplied to mobile devices. PACMAD brings together significant attributes from different usability models inorder to create a more comprehensive model. None of the attributes that it includes are new, but the existingprominent usability models ignore one or more of them. This could lead to an incomplete usability evaluation.We performed a literature search to compile a collection of studies that evaluate mobile applications and thenevaluated the studies using our model