Building a quality mobile application: A user-centered study focusing on design thinking, user experience and usability

Abstract

This article describes the creation of a mobile application through Design Thinking (DT), User Experience (UX) and usability guidelines approach in the undergraduate setting. The aim of this paper is to present the whole creative process involved in designing a mobile application, within the ideology of Design Thinking, which offers a comprehensive, reliable and, above all, simple experience. The app was built by a team of inexperienced undergraduate students in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Design at the Federal University of Pernambuco, during a process that lasted a month. As a result, the application has obtained a high success rate, being the third most downloaded application of all genres in the first week it became available in BlackBerry Store, and also getting extremely high ratings by leading technology websites in Brazil. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.