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User experience evaluation metrics for usable accounting tools

Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) have become active instruments for poverty alleviation, employment generation as well as economic and social development. However, SMMEs in developing countries operate under effervescent business environments characterised by high inflation rates, poor technology infrastructure, lack of business expertise and resources. There is a need for these organisations to strategically align their business processes for them to adapt and survive in the operating environment turbulence. There are dozens of application software designed specifically to support SMME business processes on the market. On the contrary, software developers pay little attention to the user experience and usability aspects of their products resulting in the packages falling short on overall usability. Highly usable applications improve users' productivity, satisfaction and service quality delivery. Hence SMMEs in developing countries should implement software tools with usable user interfaces. Considering the applications' usability failure it becomes vital to research the user experiences of a typical accounting tool commonly used in developing countries' SMMEs. This paper proposes evaluation metrics that are applicable to evaluate the User Experience (UX) of a chosen accounting tool commonly used in developing countries. The paper introduces a brief background on the current situation in typical developing countries' SMMEs. A discussion on the accounting tools used in SMMEs operating in developing countries follows with a definition of UX, its facets and evaluation methods. Evaluation results on the UX of Pastel accounting, Xpress 2009 is presented. The paper culminates with metrics proposed to evaluate the user experience of accounting tools and proposes future work to improve on the proposed metrics.