A Comparative Study of Overleaf and Cocalc using Usability Heuristics

LaTeX is a fundamental document standard used in many different areas. In contrast to other document tools (such as MS Word), LaTeX contains capabilities that provide more versatility. However, these characteristics may make the format less understandable for new users. Users will learn the fundamentals of how to enter plain text, format non-standard scripts, and generate documents. This system makes it easy to write technical and scientific documents that you'll probably need to edit. Background: LaTeX editors have formatting that is similar to HTML. It was created particularly to add mathematical equations to digital documents for scientific research articles. Preparing documents became easier for users when they use LaTeX editors like Overleaf, Cocalc, TeXmaker etc., As these LaTeX editors (Overleaf and CoCalc) do not require any software installed on their laptops. Objectives: The following objectives of this thesis are used to understand and use both software Overleaf and CoCalc and then determine their relevance. To compare the selected LaTeX editors by using usability heuristic principles. To make the users familiarize with the LaTeX editors by assigning them to complete tasks in Overleaf and CoCalc. To conduct a user survey based on usability heuristic principles and analyse the survey data. Method: Survey evaluation is the approach that has been selected and used for comparison. The survey's questions, which will be administered via Google Forms, were based on usability heuristics. There will be 14 questions in all on the survey. Conclusion - The results of this thesis demonstrate that, when compared to Overleaf, Cocalc provides the better user experience. Results: The results of the survey are gathered. These results are then further analysed. After analysing, a conclusion is made as to which editor among Overleaf and CoCalc followed the usability heuristics more appropriate. Keywords: LaTeX editors, Survey results, Usability, Usability heuristic principles, User experience.