Realisation of Usability Tests: A Social Media Marketing Software Development Case

Christina Eberharter, Anna Fensel
2020 International Conference on Intelligent Environments  
Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn opened the door for new ways of online marketing-social media marketing. In order to use social networks efficiently for marketing purposes and reach (potential) customers, marketers rely on social media marketing software (SMMS), supporting companies and individuals with publishing, engaging, promoting or listening on social media networks. In order to make a competitive SMMS, some of the most important quality factors are usability and
more » ... experience. In practice, often only user interface (UI) experts are used for design updates as usability tests can be time intensive and costly. Based on the use case of the social media management tool Onlim (www.onlim.com), the extent to which usability tests can detect user experience issues and suggest improvements was studied by conducting a usability lab. The data of 20 participants of the conducted usability lab was used for an indepth analysis. The analysis identified fifteen usability problems whereas five are system and ten operational problems. Overall only 40% of the problems were resolved through the implementation of a new UI design when not taking usability tests outcomes into account, and 60% of the problems still remain in the new interface or are only partly solved. Therefore, on an example of SMMS, it has been shown that the usability tests on one hand are valuable, and on the other hand, are difficult to incorporate in the development of the software in rapidly evolving fields.
doi:10.3233/aise200064 dblp:conf/intenv/EberharterF20 fatcat:jrpdgb7gcrbgtbxpf4satb2ptm