A Heuristic-Based Usability Analysis of the MOBIMAL Mobile Banking Application: Case Study of National Commercial Bank, Libya
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61856/vfmdza32Abstract
Mobile applications are gaining momentum in recent years. This allows customers to conduct a variety of banking transactions through mobile phones. However, the physical nature of mobile phones in terms of their smaller screen size has a few limitations, such as the lower volume of information rendering and the limited capacity of handling users’ interactions compared to desktop applications. These limitations make the design of user-friendly mobile applications challenging. As part of the user interface design of mobile device applications, poor consideration of end-users’ usability requirements could lead to abandonment or underutilization of mobile applications. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the usability of MOBIMAL, which is the mobile banking App used by the Libyan National Commercial Bank. The evaluation was conducted based on a heuristic analysis of its user interface. The findings of this assessment were validated by four external experts. The study identified several usability violations and provided a detailed analysis of the interface challenges affecting the usability of the evaluated application.
References
Abukhzam, M., & Lee, A. (2010). Factors affecting bank staff attitude towards e-banking adoption in Libya. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 42(1), 1–15.
Al Hosni, N., Ali, S., & Ashrafi, R. (2010). The key success factors to mobile commerce for Arab countries in Middle East. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-Based Applications & Services (pp. 787–790).
Ardito, C., Buono, P., Caivano, D., Costabile, M. F., Lanzilotti, R., Bruun, A., & Stage, J. (2011). Usability evaluation: A survey of software development organizations. In SEKE (pp. 282–287).
Bawden, D., & Robinson, L. (2020). Information overload: An overview.
BuddeComm. (2021). Libya – Telecoms, mobile and broadband – Statistics and analyses. https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Libya-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses
Carstens, D. S., & Malone, L. C. (2006). Applying chunking theory in organizational password guidelines. Journal of Information, Information Technology & Organizations, 1.
Chattratichart, J., & Lindgaard, G. (2008). A comparative evaluation of heuristic-based usability inspection methods. In CHI '08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2213–2220).
Cristian Rusu, C., Roncagliolo, S., Rusu, V., Collazos, C. A., & Inostroza, R. (2016). Developing SMASH: A set of smartphone usability heuristics. Computer Standards & Interfaces, 43, 40–52.
De Kock, E., Van Biljon, J., & Pretorius, M. (2009). Usability evaluation methods: Mind the gaps. In Proceedings of the Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (pp. 122–131).
Joyce, G., Lilley, M., Barker, T., & Jefferies, A. (2018). Heuristic evaluation for mobile applications: Extending a map of the literature. In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp. 15–26).
Khajouei, R., Esfahani, M. Z., & Jahani, Y. (2017). Comparison of heuristic and cognitive walkthrough usability evaluation methods for evaluating health information systems. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(e1), e55–e60. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocw100
Kumar, B. A., & Hussein, S. (2014). Heuristic based user interface evaluation of mobile money application: A case study. International Journal of Handheld Computing Research, 5(2), 75–86.
Kumar, B. A., & Shiva, M. (2019). Usability heuristics for mobile learning applications. Education and Information Technologies, 24, 1819–1833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-09860-z
Kumar, B. A., Goundar, M. S., & Chand, S. S. (2020). A framework for heuristic evaluation of mobile learning applications. Education and Information Technologies, 25(4), 3189–3204.
Malhotra, P., & Singh, B. (2010). An analysis of Internet banking offerings and its determinants in India. Internet Research, 20(1), 87–106.
Mirkowicz, M., & Grodner, G. (2018). Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics in selected elements of interface design of selected blogs. Social Communication, 4(2), 30–51.
Mueller, C. J., Tamir, D., Komogortsev, O. V., & Feldman, L. (2009). An economical approach to usability testing. In 33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference (pp. 124–129).
Nielsen, J. (1998). Cost of user testing a website. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/cost-of-user-testing-a-website/
Nielsen, J. (2005). Ten usability heuristics for user interface design. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
Nielsen, J. (2012). Usability 101: Introduction to usability. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
Nielsen, J., & Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 249–256).
Nishchyk, A., Sanderson, N. C., & Chen, W. (2025). Elderly-centered usability heuristics for augmented reality design and development. Universal Access in the Information Society, 24(1), 621–641.
Pribeanu, C. (2009). A usability assistant for the heuristic evaluation of interactive systems. Studies in Informatics and Control, 18(4), 355–362.
Rotaru, O., Orhei, C., & Vasiu, R. (2026). Hybrid usability evaluation of an automotive REM tool: Human and LLM-based heuristic assessment of IBM Doors Next. Applied Sciences, 16(2), 723. https://doi.org/10.3390/app16020723
Singh, S., Srivastava, V., & Srivastava, R. K. (2010). Customer acceptance of mobile banking: A conceptual framework. SIES Journal of Management, 7(1), 55.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 International Innovations Journal of Applied Science
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
