A Usability Evaluation Considering Difference of Prototype

In recent years, the proportion of people using smartphone has been increased by the rapid progress of information and communication technology. Simultaneously, the development of application software for the smartphone is increased, so it is considered that the usability is important factor in the development. The usability measured by using paper prototype in the early stage of development does not necessarily coincide with those of the implemented design. In this research, the usability of each prototype was evaluated. In our experiment, using paper prototype, rapid prototype, and real device, the operation time was measured while using a recipe application as a basic usage of smartphone, and the subjective evaluation on satisfaction was also conducted. From the experimental result, the operation time for the task which has many pages is longer than the other tasks. Moreover, there is very slight difference about difficulty which subjects felt although using the paper prototype is difficult for subjects to imagine the real operation compared to real device. In conclusion, when it comes to difficulty about using smartphone, it does not matter what type of prototype although there is still a need to consider the operation time in paper prototype.