Or why Cognitive Modeling Is A Useful Tool To Evaluate The Usability Of Smartphone Applications

The usability of two different versions (A and B) of a smartphone shopping list application is evaluated via user tests and cognitive modeling. The shopping list application allows users to select different products out of different stores. Version A has less menu-depth than version B. The results show that less product-search time is required for version B. This benefit of version B over A declines, as users become more experienced. Advantages of modeling approaches and disadvantages of empirical data are discussed. It is shown that cognitive modeling approaches with ACT-R are a powerful tool for model based usability testing. Keywords-usability; cognitive modeling; ACT-R; mobile applications;