A Comparative Analysis for the Enhancement of Design of Local Cultural Mobile Applications

Abstract

Culturally appropriate design guidelines could support developers in designing good mobile applications for users.  Many studies in developing countries have been conducted without considering the local cultural aspects of the mobile applications for the user interface design, particularly in developing countries. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the usability of mobile applications for three local cultural applications in Malaysian universities to improve the design of mobile applications.  The research approach of this article emphasises the descriptive quantitative results from heuristic evaluation between academics and students in the use of three mobile apps. According to the findings, the academics’ preferences are Jawi, Songket, and Batik, in ascending order, while the students’ preferences are Songket, Jawi and Batik in ascending order. Consequently, both groups preferred Batik as it attains higher means in the heuristic evaluation. Due to the high ranking of means for all the design principles, this study provides new insights into the prospect of four cultural guidelines for local cultural mobile applications in addition to the general usability design guidelines.