Development of Usability Guidelines: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract Usability guideline is a well-established topic of study, with numerous guidelines developed over the years. There is a lack of study that provides a comprehensive overview of the development of usability guidelines. Motivated by this shortcoming, a systematic review was conducted to establish a body of knowledge on the development of usability guidelines to assist researchers working in the field. The systematic review was conducted by analyzing forty-three (43) research papers selected from seven (7) digital libraries and assessed to identify; the current state of research, specific domains, data collection techniques, development methods, and validation techniques. The results showed an increasing research trend in the development of usability guidelines. The development of usability guidelines was undertaken in many different domains, where the medical domain recorded the highest number of activities. Literature survey is the dominant data collection technique for developing usability guidelines, while usability evaluation is the most common technique for validating newly developed guidelines. The findings concluded that there is a lack of standardization for developing, implementing, and evaluating usability guidelines. Future work can be carried out to establish a methodology for developing and implementing usability guidelines. Moreover, a tool can also be built using machine learning to develop usability guidelines automatically.