Measuring the Usability of a Smartphone Delivered Museum Guide

• Main Authors: Mohd Kamal, Othman, Petrie, Helen, Power, Christopher
• Format: Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: AC Collections. Series. Collected works
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/3369/1/Measuring%20the%20usability%20of%20a%20smartphone.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/3369/

Smartphones are increasingly being deployed by museums and other cultural spaces to provide guides for visitors, replacing dedicated audioguides or docents. This paper describes a study investigating a scale to measure the usability of a multimedia smartphone guide for a museum, the Multimedia Guide Scale (MMGS). Two different types of museum guide were compared: a free choice tour (FC-tour) and guided tour (G-tour). Result shows that there was a significant difference in scores on the MMGS between the two tours, between the three components of the MMGS (Quality of Interaction; Learnability and Control; General Usability) and a significant interaction between the two variables (factors and the guides). The mean scores were higher for the G-tour on the General Usability component and particularly on the Quality of Interaction component, whereas for the Learnability and Control component, scores were higher for the FC-tour Guide. The implications of these findings and the use of the MMGS are discussed.