Usability guideline for mobile learning apps: an empirical study

Mobile learning is creating new opportunities for learning anywhere, anytime and, as a result, a number of mobile learning apps are being developed to take advantage of this. Owing to the nature of mobile devices, such as small screen size, limited input capability and processing power, it poses number of challenges to create usable user friendly mobile learning apps. There has been little research done to assist developers working in this area. This paper proposes a set of usability guideline based on the HCI theoretical framework to assist in the development of usable mobile learning apps. In order to validate the proposed guideline, prototype mobile learning apps were developed and evaluated. The results indicate that the guideline is highly useful for creating usable mobile learning apps.

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