Title
REST4Mobile: A framework for enhanced usability of REST services on smartphones
Abstract
Considering end-user research and proliferation of smartphones and REpresentational State Transfer (REST) interfaces, we envisage that smartphone owners can innovate to compose applications on the small screen. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a REST service development framework (viz, REST4Mobile) with the aim to enhance the usability when consuming on smartphones. Our design process uses the usability factors identified in our previous work as primary constraints for modeling the framework and a corresponding composition tool. Thus, sample REST services are developed with and then without the framework, and usability of composing the services on smartphones is evaluated. Evaluation was conducted by deploying the component REST services, the composition tool, and the resulting composite apps on a local machine. As the task of service composition is conducted directly on the smartphone's screen, the evaluation process is designed to be repeatable on remote servers and on the cloud. Results showed that constraints can be added into the REST architectural style on the basis of the influences of domain specific terms and human cognitive capabilities on the naming and size of the Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). In addition, the principles embodying the framework are found to be influential factors in enhancing the usability of REST services on smartphones.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1002/cpe.4174
CONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION-PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE
Keywords
Field
DocType
cloud computing,end-user development,REST Service,service composition,smartphone,usability
Web usability,Representational state transfer,Usability engineering,Computer science,Usability,Usability goals,Usability lab,Cognitive walkthrough,Usability inspection,Multimedia
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
32.0
SP1.0
1532-0626
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
9
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Gebremariam Mesfin110.35
G. Ghinea226126.74
Tor-Morten Grønli38123.80
Sahel Alouneh47111.06