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A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs

Usability is key to achieve quality in software products. The client applications with a high score in usability might impact on the power consumption when they are run in a PC. For this reason, energy savings turn to be critical in green software systems. In this paper the relationship between the...

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Autores principales: García-Berná, José A., Ouhbi, Sofia, Fernández-Alemán, José L., Carrillo de Gea, Juan M., Nicolás, Joaquín, Moros, Begoña, Toval, Ambrosio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33546174
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041385
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author García-Berná, José A.
Ouhbi, Sofia
Fernández-Alemán, José L.
Carrillo de Gea, Juan M.
Nicolás, Joaquín
Moros, Begoña
Toval, Ambrosio
author_facet García-Berná, José A.
Ouhbi, Sofia
Fernández-Alemán, José L.
Carrillo de Gea, Juan M.
Nicolás, Joaquín
Moros, Begoña
Toval, Ambrosio
author_sort García-Berná, José A.
collection PubMed
description Usability is key to achieve quality in software products. The client applications with a high score in usability might impact on the power consumption when they are run in a PC. For this reason, energy savings turn to be critical in green software systems. In this paper the relationship between the usability evaluations of the GUIs and the power consumption measurements of the main components of a PC were analysed. A set of 5 web-based personal health records (PHRs) were selected as a case study. The usability assessment was performed by an expert, employing the 14 principles of design by Alan Dix as heuristics. They were scored on a Likert scale after performing a collection of common tasks in the PHRs. At the same time, an equipment to measure the energy consumption of hard disk drive, graphics card, processor, monitor and power supply was used. Spearman’s index was studied for the correlations between the usability assessments and the power consumption measurements. As a results, some weak relationships were found. A total of 5 usability heuristics were observed to may influence energy consumption when they were considered in the implementation of the PHRs. These heuristics were the following ones: consistency, task migratability, observability, recoverability and responsiveness. Based on the results, the usability principles of design cannot always be related to lower energy consumption. Future research should focus on the tradeoffs between usability and power consumption of client applications when they are used in a computer.
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spelling pubmed-79131592021-02-28 A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs García-Berná, José A. Ouhbi, Sofia Fernández-Alemán, José L. Carrillo de Gea, Juan M. Nicolás, Joaquín Moros, Begoña Toval, Ambrosio Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Usability is key to achieve quality in software products. The client applications with a high score in usability might impact on the power consumption when they are run in a PC. For this reason, energy savings turn to be critical in green software systems. In this paper the relationship between the usability evaluations of the GUIs and the power consumption measurements of the main components of a PC were analysed. A set of 5 web-based personal health records (PHRs) were selected as a case study. The usability assessment was performed by an expert, employing the 14 principles of design by Alan Dix as heuristics. They were scored on a Likert scale after performing a collection of common tasks in the PHRs. At the same time, an equipment to measure the energy consumption of hard disk drive, graphics card, processor, monitor and power supply was used. Spearman’s index was studied for the correlations between the usability assessments and the power consumption measurements. As a results, some weak relationships were found. A total of 5 usability heuristics were observed to may influence energy consumption when they were considered in the implementation of the PHRs. These heuristics were the following ones: consistency, task migratability, observability, recoverability and responsiveness. Based on the results, the usability principles of design cannot always be related to lower energy consumption. Future research should focus on the tradeoffs between usability and power consumption of client applications when they are used in a computer. MDPI 2021-02-03 2021-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7913159/ /pubmed/33546174 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041385 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
García-Berná, José A.
Ouhbi, Sofia
Fernández-Alemán, José L.
Carrillo de Gea, Juan M.
Nicolás, Joaquín
Moros, Begoña
Toval, Ambrosio
A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs
title A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs
title_full A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs
title_fullStr A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs
title_full_unstemmed A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs
title_short A Study on the Relationship between Usability of GUIs and Power Consumption of a PC: The Case of PHRs
title_sort study on the relationship between usability of guis and power consumption of a pc: the case of phrs
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33546174
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041385
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