USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY ASSESSMENT OF MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICE APPLICATIONS IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

Mobile Financial Service (MFS) refers to the use of mobile phones to access and execute financial transactions. In recent times, the rapid proliferation of information technology in daily life has led to a significant increase in the use of MFS applications in Bangladesh. Consequently, it is essential for MFS applications to be highly usable and comprehensible to all types of users. However, only a limited number of existing studies have focused on designing, developing, and evaluating MFS applications to enhance their usability, intuitiveness, understandability, and accessibility, particularly within the context of Bangladesh. Therefore, the objectives of this research are twofold: firstly, to evaluate the usability and accessibility of major MFS applications commonly used in Bangladesh, and secondly, to explore the applicability of design principles for enhancing the user interfaces (UIs) of MFS applications. To achieve these objectives, the usability of three MFS applications (bKash, Nagad, and Rocket) used extensively in Bangladesh was evaluated through heuristic evaluation, semiotic evaluation, and empirical studies. The outcomes of the usability evaluation revealed numerous usability issues for each application, provided detailed insights into the intuitiveness of various interface elements, and highlighted usability concerns from the users’ perspective in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Additionally, an accessibility evaluation was conducted following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), which identified several accessibility problems. Subsequently, a set of design considerations were proposed and a prototypical solution was developed based on these considerations. Finally, a comparative user study was undertaken to assess the usability and accessibility of the selected MFS applications and the developed prototypical UIs using the System Usability Scale (SUS) approach. The SUS evaluation demonstrated that the proposed design solutions offered improved usability and accessibility compared to existing MFS applications.