Assres, Gebremariam Mesfin (2016) A Framework for Enhanced Usability of Web Services on Smartphones. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.
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Abstract
Today, smartphones are capable of hosting a large variety of applications as clients for the classical and service-based business applications. They are also foreseeable for composing and hosting service-based thick client applications aiming at exploiting users’ creativity and resolve mobile connectivity challenges, respectively. On the other hand, the dynamic change in workflows of the businesses of present time is calling for frequent software maintenance requests where the use of smartphones as end-user developer tools can play a significant role. However, the challenges in input mechanisms, storage, and screen size of smartphones would all limit the operations of web service composition. In addition, the web services themselves have usability limitations even on the conventional computing devices. From our literature-based survey, we confirmed that these challenges can be addressed through criteria-based selection of appropriate web services and associated technologies. Accordingly, the REST services, semi-automatic composition using Web 2.0 technologies, JSON-based messaging format, and cross-platform mobile client are found more appropriate, and constitute a stack of technologies for implementing resource-oriented architecture on smartphones. In addition, REST-based cross-platform applications are found to have an acceptable perceived usability on smartphones, the user experience remained unaffected when adopted onto the respective native devices and the process required only limited configuration effort. Similarly, a survey conducted on the factors influencing usability of REST services on smartphones indicated that limiting the breadth and depth of a URIs namespace, and the number of parameters in messages enhances usability. In addition, the naming of nodes of URIs’ paths and parameters using domain terms also contribute to that end. Accordingly, these are used as inputs to describe our design for a framework that enhances usability of composing REST services on smartphones, namely, WSD4Mobile. Our framework evaluation also indicated that the influences of human cognitive capabilities and domain specific terms on the size and naming of URIs’ nodes and parameters can leverage additional constraints to the description of the REST architectural style. In addition, the principles embodying the framework can enhance the usability of REST services on smartphones.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Web service, REST, SOAP, Smartphone, Cross-platform, Composition, Semi-automatic, SOA, WSD4Mobile, HCI, Usability |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software T Technology > T Technology (General) |
| Divisions: | Africana |
| Depositing User: | Selom Ghislain |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2018 12:54 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2018 12:54 |
| URI: | http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/7314 |
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