Assessing the Usability of Air Quality Mobile Application

Abstract

Global industrialization, urbanization and motorization have been consistently changing the composition balance of the terrestrial atmosphere, whose importance is vital for the survival of all living beings and the climatic balance. Air pollution is one of the biggest causes of mortality and environmental issues claiming 7 million lives annually due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Urban centers contain millions of people of all ages and health states. However, certain daily activities could be avoided by sensitive population, if the awareness of air quality conditions would be more user friendly/accessible. This paper summarizes the heuristic evaluation carried out to the Quito Air Quality application, a new mobile application to display the concentrations of air pollutants in the whole city of Quito. Since, there is a limited number of monitoring stations (9 stations only)the mobile application use an interpolation method to estimate the concentration of pollutants whatever the location in the city. The development of the interfaces is carried out by an agile, collaborative and user-centered methodology. The results have allowed us to obtain a series of recommendations that could be applied to improve the functionalities and the user interface of any air quality application.