Revealing the mobile UX horizon: Exploring user experience aspects, attributes, and measurement methods - A systematic mapping study

Context: The exponential growth of mobile internet usage underscores the critical importance of investigating mobile app enhancements across various domains. User Experience (UX) emerges as a pivotal quality factor, encompassing emotional, sensory, and contextual dimensions, significantly influencing user behavior and retention. Objective: This systematic mapping study investigates research efforts on mobile application UX to discern domains where UX has been explored, identifying UX aspects, attributes, and assessment methods. Method: Through a standard systematic mapping procedure, 189 primary studies were identified from 9107 reviewed articles across five digital libraries. Results: 100 distinct UX aspects and 166 attributes were identified and categorized into App, User, and Context aspects. These aspects were distributed among 14 domains, with healthcare being extensively researched. The usability aspect is prominent in 54.5 % of studies. Efficiency, satisfaction, effectiveness, learnability, memorability, attractiveness, errors, and ease of use emerged as the most commonly utilized attributes—notably, these attributes are considered usability attributes among several standards. Additionally, 38 and 22 evaluation methods were identified for aspects and attributes, grouped into self-reported, physiological, observational, and expert evaluation categories. Questionnaires were predominantly utilized. Conclusion: This review summarizes the mobile application UX landscape, highlighting key aspects, attributes, and evaluation methods across domains. Future research should leverage these insights to advance UX design and evaluation practices, fostering innovation in software engineering and human-computer interaction.