Comparing Two Sets of Usability Heuristics in a User Experience Evaluation: A Case Study in an E-Commerce Mobile Application

Nowadays, user experience (UX) is relevant in constructing software products since companies intend to offer their customers the best possible interaction experience. Given the current competition on the market and the several websites available, guaranteeing customer satisfaction could mean choosing one company over another. For this reason, user experience is studied through evaluation methods to determine how satisfying the interaction experience is. One of the most used methods is the heuristic evaluation which involves a group of experts verifying whether the design proposal complies with a set of principles called “heuristics”. Usually, the most preferred principles by practitioners are the ten heuristics proposed by Jakob Nielsen. However, these principles fail to cover some critical characteristics that must be analyzed in software products of specific categories. This situation has generated the proposal of new sets of heuristics focused on elements not considered by the traditional approach. A representative case is Inostroza's heuristics to assess mobile applications. However, their effectiveness has not been validated in other domains. The purpose of this research is to explore whether the new set of heuristics (SMASH) is appropriate and accurate for the evaluation of e-commerce applications that are at the same time mobile-based. Through a comparative study, it has been possible to identify small details that need to be covered.