Prof. Dr. Azham Hussain | Universiti Utara Malaysia (original) (raw)

Papers by Prof. Dr. Azham Hussain

Nowadays, YouTube is the 3 rd most visited website in the world. It was created for users to sear... more Nowadays, YouTube is the 3 rd most visited website in the world. It was created for users to search, watch and share video. Statistics show that YouTube run in more than 88 countries and support 76 different languages which covered almost 95% of Internet population globally. Therefore, a usability study is for specific type of users such as based on gender, range of age and country is considered a must for this kind of top website. In this study, we focus on YouTube website usability for Malaysian teenagers that are currently schooling in boarding school with limited access of Internet. It was done in a controlled lab environment with proper devices and software as MacBook, LCD Monitor, and WhatPulse heat map tracker. The evaluation was made based on usability metrics: ease of use, usefulness and satisfaction of users with combination of recording videos, mouse and keyboard heat map and questionnaires. Findings show that most of the respondents just use YouTube for video watching only while ignoring other features in the same time. There are difficulties in using it at the first moment but could catch up in short time. It shows how usable YouTube website especially in the learnability and memorability aspects.

The range and availability of mobile applications is expanding rapidly. With the increased proces... more The range and availability of mobile applications is expanding rapidly. With the increased processing power available on portable devices, developers are increasing the range of services by embracing smartphones in their extensive and diverse practices. While usability testing and evaluations of mobile applications have not yet touched the accuracy level of other web based applications. The existing usability models do not adequately capture the complexities of interacting with applications on a mobile platform. Therefore, this study aims to presents review on existing usability models for mobile applications. These models are in their infancy but with time and more research they may eventually be adopted. Moreover, different categories of mobile apps (medical, entertainment, education) possess different functional and non-functional requirements thus customized models are required for diverse mobile applications.

Evaluation for mobile e-book applications are limited and did not address all the important usabi... more Evaluation for mobile e-book applications are limited and did not address all the important usability measurements. Hence, this study aimed to identify the characteristics that affect user satisfaction on the usability of mobile e-book applications. Five characteristics that have a significant effect on the user satisfaction of mobile e-book applications have been identified namely readability, effectiveness, accessibility, efficiency, and navigation. A usability evaluation was conducted on three mobile e-book applications namely Adobe Acrobat Reader, Ebook Reader, and Amazon Kindle. 30 students from Universiti Utara Malaysia evaluated the mobile e-book applications and their satisfaction was measured using questionnaire. The outcomes discovered that the five characteristics have a significant positive relationship with user satisfaction. This provides insights into the main characteristics that increase user satisfaction.

The increased use of mobile devices has led to an upsurge in the number of mobile applications. T... more The increased use of mobile devices has led to an upsurge in the number of mobile applications. This makes the usability of these applications a very crucial and critical issue. The Amila Pregnancy mobile app is revolutionizing the delivery of healthcare services to pregnancy woman across the globe and is increasingly becoming beneficial in their daily life. Only a few digital interventions have been developed for pregnant woman, and little is known about the acceptability and usability of such mobile apps that provide assistance to pregnant women. Usability comprises everything that is connected with the intuitive and efficient handling of user interaction with human-made devices. This paper reports the result of a usability evaluation for Amila Pregnancy mobile application. In the study five attributes of perceived usability was measured following Jakob Nielsen principles, namely: effectiveness, efficiency, learnability, memorability and satisfaction. In addition, performance metrics were also captured. The results reveal the difficulty users had in interpreting displayed icon, locating the information provided, re-finding it and in navigating through the mobile app. The study suggests that the main menu of the app need to be further improved upon to enhance its usability.

This study tests and measures the usability of mudah.my mobile application in terms of its effici... more This study tests and measures the usability of mudah.my mobile application in terms of its efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Ten participants conscripted for the study performed five tasks on the application's interface. A summative usability evaluation based on user performance and perception was carried out. The usability testing was conducted at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) and the results obtained show that the Mudah.my mobile application is easy to use and consistent as seen from the analysis and observations made. However, the app is laden with some usability issues that should necessitate improvement. The study's outcome will benefit developers and usability engineers in providing a user-friendly and usable application that meets users' needs.

Mobile utilization has rapidly expanded due to its feasibility in executing different application... more Mobile utilization has rapidly expanded due to its feasibility in executing different applications that can be used in solving everyday problems. Common issues in daily life include electricity saving. In Iraq, the Ministry of Power seriously faces such issue. This is because most households have lack access to information regarding to sufficient power consumption, as well as applications that educate about such saving. Therefore, this study aims at developing a mobile application for Iraqi to help them understand the basis for reducing electricity consumption based on the meter data supplied by the users for square meter along with the active devices and period of usage. The proposed mobile application was evaluated by 50 households from the perspective of ease of use, usefulness, ease of learning, and satisfaction. The obtained result showed that majority of the participants found the application to be ease to use, useful, easy to learn, and were satisfied with its functionalities. The study findings provide some insights about the importance of using mobile application for promoting households in Iraq to manage their power consumption behavior.

User experience may vary from one user to another based on the design characteristics for process... more User experience may vary from one user to another based on the design characteristics for processing a certain task. Our review of the literature revealed that there is a noticeable lack of studies on the effect of mobile or m-commerce design usability on customers' trust to perform certain activities. We investigated the effect of m-commerce design usability in terms of navigability, supportability, readability, creditability, and content relevant. A close-ended questionnaire was distributed to 20 customers who were asked to perform some tasks. The result showed that majority of the participants found m-commerce design usability to influence their trust of the app. The mentioned usability elements were found to positively influence customers' trust except for supportability. Our findings provide some insights to the m-commerce designers and developers and extend the current understanding about the potential of design usability in explaining users' usage behavior.

Software sustainability evaluation is a measurement mechanism which involved several criteria of ... more Software sustainability evaluation is a measurement mechanism which involved several criteria of software development through the characteristic and sub-characteristic with requirement to meet the needs at the present until to the future generation. The measurement mechanism can support to achieve developing software towards sustainability perspective such as environment, economic and social. This paper embedded the concept of Service-Oriented Architecture into sustainability evaluation model to support the measurement criteria in the way to build software flexibility, reusability and agility. The objective is to propose several characteristic of software development with utilizing the concept of sustainability and embedded with SOA concept. The mapping criteria of SOA and software development characteristic significantly improve the measurement criteria that can be addressed in the measurement model.

This paper discuss on the dimensions that has been derived for the hearing-impaired mobile applic... more This paper discuss on the dimensions that has been derived for the hearing-impaired mobile applications usability model. General usability model consist of general dimension for evaluating mobile application however requirements for the hearing-impaired are overlooked and often scanted. This led towards mobile application developed for the hearing-impaired are left unused. It is also apparent that these usability models do not consider accessibility dimensions according to the requirement of the special users. This complicates the work of usability practitioners as well as academician that practices research usability when application are developed for the specific user needs. To overcome this issue, dimension chosen for the hearing-impaired are ensured to be align with the real need of the hearing-impaired mobile application. Besides literature studies, requirements for the hearing-impaired mobile application have been identified through interview conducted with hearing-impaired mobile application users that were recorded as video outputs and analyzed using Nvivo. Finally total of 6 out of 15 dimensions gathered are chosen for the proposed model and presented.

Emoticons are popular among distributed collective interaction user in expressing their emotion, ... more Emoticons are popular among distributed collective interaction user in expressing their emotion, gestures and actions. Emoticons have been proved to be able to avoid misunderstanding of the message, attention saving and improved the communications among different native speakers. However, beside the benefits that emoticons can provide, the study regarding emoticons in cultural perspective is still lacking. As emoticons are crucial in global communication, culture should be one of the extensively research aspect in distributed collective interaction. Therefore, this study attempt to explore and develop model for cultural-based emoticon. Three cultural models that have been used in Human-Computer Interaction were studied which are the Hall Culture Model, Trompenaars and Hampden Culture Model and Hofstede Culture Model. The dimensions from these three models will be used in developing the proposed cultural-based emoticon model.

Like searching for a "needle" in a "haystack", suppose that there is a large set of signals (fini... more Like searching for a "needle" in a "haystack", suppose that there is a large set of signals (finite sequences of numbers) fs1; s2; s3; g, and a special signal q that may or may not be in the collection. How can the signals be found in the collection that is similar, or identical to q, and how can this be done quickly? A solution to this question is the basis of the Shazam smart phone app, where a listener captures a short excerpt of a recorded song with the smart phone's microphone, and in a matter of moments the app reports the name of the song and the artist. Here, the "needle" is the excerpt, and the "haystack" is a vast corpus of popular music. The Shazam algorithm is powered by Fourier analysis. This paper presents a report on a usability evaluation of Amazon Shazam app. The researchers present the outcome based on a task-based evaluation that involved 15 users of different level of experience who performed 5 tasks using the Shazam mobile app. Post-test questionnaire was used to capture users' perceptions about the app. The results demonstrate that most of the participants were satisfied with services provided by the app.

There is a dramatic increase in the development of mobile applications in recent years. This make... more There is a dramatic increase in the development of mobile applications in recent years. This makes the usability evaluation of these mobile applications an important aspect in the advancement and application of technology. In this paper, a laboratory-based usability evaluation was carried out on the Amazon Kindle app using 15 users who performed 5 tasks on the Kindle e-book mobile app. A post-test questionnaire was administered to elicit users' perception on the usability of the application. The results demonstrate that almost all the participants were satisfied with services provided by the Amazon Kindle e-book mobile app. On all the four user experience factors examined, namely, perceived ease-of-use, perceived visibility, perceived enjoyabilty, and perceived efficiency, the evaluation outcome shows that the participants had a good and rich mobile experience with the application.

This paper reports on a usability evaluation of Lazada mobile application, an online shopping app... more This paper reports on a usability evaluation of Lazada mobile application, an online shopping app for mobile devices. The evaluation was conducted using 12 users of ages 18 to 24. Seven (7) were expert users and the other 5 were novice users. The study objectives were to evaluate the perceived effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of the mobile application. The result provides a positive feedback and shows that the mobile shopping app is effective, efficient, and satisfying as perceived by the study participants. However, there are some observed usability issues with the main menu and the payment method that necessitates improvements to increase the application's effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. The suggested improvements include: 1) the main menu should be capitalized and place on the left side of mobile app and 2) payment method tutorial should be included as a hyperlink in the payment method page. This observation will be helpful to the owners of the application in future version development of the app.

The study investigates how helpful the use of scoring rubrics is, in the performance assessment o... more The study investigates how helpful the use of scoring rubrics is, in the performance assessment of software requirements engineering students and whether its use can lead to students' performance improvement in the development of software requirements artifacts and models. Scoring rubrics were used by two instructors to assess the cognitive performance of a student in the design and development of software requirements artifacts. The study results indicate that the use of scoring rubrics is very helpful in objectively assessing the performance of software requirements or software engineering students. Furthermore, the results revealed that the use of scoring rubrics can also produce a good achievement assessments direction showing whether a student is either improving or not in a repeated or iterative assessment. In a nutshell, its use leads to the performance improvement of students. The results provided some insights for further investigation and will be beneficial to researchers, requirements engineers, system designers, developers and project managers.

—Studies show that YouTube (a video streaming application) is the third most frequently visited w... more —Studies show that YouTube (a video streaming application) is the third most frequently visited website globally. It was created for users to search for, watch and share video online. Statistics show that YouTube runs in more than 88 countries and support 76 different languages and this covers about 95% of Internet population worldwide. Hence, a usability study for a specific class of users such as teenagers for such a top-rated web application with very high user loyalty is necessary. In this study, the authors focused on YouTube website usability for Malaysian teenagers that are currently schooling in a boarding school with limited Internet access. The usability study was carried out in a controlled laboratory environment with devices and software like MacBook, LCD Monitor, and WhatPulse heat map tracker. The usability evaluation was done using the following usability metrics: ease of use, usefulness, learnability, and users' satisfaction. Data was collected using a combination of video recordings, mouse, keyboard heat map and questionnaires. The outcome shows that most of the respondents only use YouTube for watching the video and do not give attention to other features in the application while doing that. In addition, the study reveals that first-time users encounter some difficulties using the application, but however do catch up within a short while. The study further shows that YouTube application is efficient, satisfying, useful, and learnable. Some observed issues with the application were highlighted and useful remedying suggestions for improvement were proffered.

—In recent times, the use of mobile devices has drastically increased as a result of how feasible... more —In recent times, the use of mobile devices has drastically increased as a result of how feasible it is in utilizing them in solving everyday problems using several applications. One of the recurrent issues in everyday life is electricity consumption and the need for energy savings. This is an enormous issue and challenge faced by the Iraqi's Ministry of Power. Most households in Iraq lack access to information regarding electric energy consumption and the need to save and conserve energy. In addition, there is also a dearth of suitable applications that educate households about energy saving. In the light of this, this study assessed the user experience of a developed mobile recommender application for Iraqis that helps them understand the need for reduction in electricity consumption based meter readings/data supplied by users. This proposed mobile recommender app was assessed by 50 households from the point of view of ease of use, usefulness, ease of learning, and satisfaction. The study's outcome reveals that majority of the participants found that the app was easy to use, useful, easy to learn, and was satisfied with its features and functionalities. The results of the study offer some useful insights and import about the use of mobile recommender app for promoting household's energy consumption management in Iraq and also prompts a good energy savings culture and behaviour among the people.

—With the advance and the spread of communication devices, users are increasingly interacting wit... more —With the advance and the spread of communication devices, users are increasingly interacting with the applications on the Internet. This modern technology has been widespread and many industries are utilizing it, such as e-commerce. The literature stated that, any technology/products that are developed, it should be first accepted by its users. Broadly, user's positive or negative attitude will affect the acceptance of new technology/products. Usability of the website is a strong predictor of the user satisfaction and intention to use. However, in recent years, the number of online stores has grown exponentially and it creates a strong rivalry between those stores. Therefore, poor website design can drive away potential customers. This study undertakes the ABC (not real name) commercial website as a case study. Unfortunately, until recently, the number of visitors who are visiting the ABC website has been a steep declined compared to other marketing websites. Consequently, the current empirical study strives to assess the usability of the ABC website based on the WAMMI components and the participants viewpoint. The results indicate that, attractiveness is satisfactory for the visitors of the website. In turn, each of controllability, efficiency, helpfulness and learnability are not satisfactory for the visitors.

—Usability evaluation is an important element that will enable to identify performance of any sys... more —Usability evaluation is an important element that will enable to identify performance of any system or application. Through identification of these issue, usefulness of a product can be improvised. Many usability models are available to evaluate the system usability. Usability data can be collected in two different method which is objective and subjective data. This paper present subjective data analysis of usability evaluation conducted with deaf people mobile application. The results show that the application evaluated having low satisfaction score for deaf people.

— Usability evaluation is an important element that will enable to identify performance of any sy... more — Usability evaluation is an important element that will enable to identify performance of any system or application. Through identification of these issue, usefulness of a product can be improvised. Many usability models are available to evaluate the system usability. Usability data can be collected in two different method which is objective data and subjective data. This paper present objective data analysis of usability evaluation conducted with deaf people mobile application. The results show that the application evaluated having usability issue in term of performance which needs to be improvised by the developer to produce better functionality application for deaf people.