E-wallet - designed for usability

As the use of mobile payment applications (apps) and electronic wallets (e-wallets) increases, so does the demand for improved user experience when interacting with these apps. The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) focuses on the design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use. One aspect of HCI is usability, i.e., the quality of the interactions with a product or system.

This thesis investigates how an e-wallet can be designed to provide a high level of usability by conforming to best HCI practices and by formative evaluation using a set of usability evaluation methods. The research process consisted of an initial literature study and development of a prototype, which was evaluated iteratively through Thinking-aloud-protocol (TAP) and a combination of performance measurements and questionnaire by a chosen test group.

The results of the testing showed that the percentage of negative comments stayed below 50% even during iteration 1 but that the time it took to complete the tasks and the error rate had to be lowered after each iteration.

To conclude, it was clear that the test subjects had more trouble understanding the concept of the e-wallet rather than navigating and completing tasks. The difficulties lay in understanding how currencies were stored and how transactions happened. When developing this e-wallet we noticed that the most important issue was to make new functions and concepts familiar to the user through relating it to recognizable ideas.

Keywords: Usability, usability testing, e-wallet, mobile payments, Think-aloud protocol, performance measurements