Early usability evaluation of model-based mobile applications

The evaluation of mobile applications concerning their usability is an emerging area of research in the field of Computer-Human Interaction. The aim was to identify potential usability problems that may cause the reject of the system. The usual way to evaluate usability is through a user test once the system is implemented. At this stage, it is difficult/expensive to go back to the design and make the required changes to solve usability issues. Recently, the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm is gaining popularity as a solution to reduces changes cost and complexity. In such an approach, the application is modelled and, through a set of model transformations, the target application is outputted. The transformation process establishes a mechanism of traceability between the application models elaborated at the design phase and the final application. Due to this mechanism, the analysis of these models to improve their usability was seen promising to preserve this usability at the final application or improve it. The present paper attempts to prove this assumption in the mobile application development context. It presents a new approach to early evaluate the usability from the conceptual schemas that represent the mobile application. A case study is presented to evaluate the potentialities and limitations of our proposal.