Human Factors Analysis and Usability Evaluation of Atari Website

This report provides a comprehensive human factors analysis of the Atari Best Electronics website, evaluating its design, user interface, and overall usability. The analysis begins by justifying the investment in a quality website, emphasizing the importance of user experience and its impact on customer attraction and online traffic. A cost-benefit analysis is conducted, highlighting the potential financial benefits of improving the website's design, including reduced production costs, improved customer retention, and long-term savings. The report then critically evaluates the current website, assessing its attractiveness, navigation, and overall utility, and identifying key usability goals such as speed, learnability, effectiveness, satisfaction, accuracy, and memorability. The analysis includes a user survey to determine the website's usability goals and identify areas for improvement. The report also examines the human factors in Atari's web design, focusing on visual hierarchy, text alignment, and font weight, highlighting areas where the current design fails to meet best practices. The report concludes by recommending improvements to enhance the user experience and overall effectiveness of the Atari website.

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HUMAN FACTORS
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Human Factors 2
Human Factors
Justification for Investment
The design of a website plays a significant role in determining the success of an
organization. Mainly, this is because a website acts as a representation of the organization in
general. For this reason, lack of a proper interaction and user interface renders the website
useless in its bid to introduce the user to its organization. On the other hand, a good user
interface allows for easy and efficient interaction for the user (Khuff, 2017). As a result, many
browsers value interesting websites that possess intuitive user interfaces that guide them in
performing their task in any engaging manner. In this regard, it is imperative for a company to
invest in a quality web design and user interface as it easily attracts customers and propels online
traffic.
Cost benefit analysis of a good user interface for Atari Best Electronics
It is imperative to note that investment in a quality website would be very beneficial for
Atari Best Electronics. Currently, the website interface and design is unattractive and
complicated for the user. However, making it more and attractive and easier for its clients to use
would significantly improve the traffic to the website and, in turn improve the profitability of the
firm. Primarily, one of the most important benefits of a good UI is that it is easier for the user to
navigate through the website and users would require minimum help to exploit it. In this regard,
it reduces the number of clients that the firm losses owing to difficulties in using the website.
Indeed, this would enhance the number of clients retained and, hence, enhance its profitability.

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Additionally, investing in the project will significantly reduce the short production costs
of the business. More specifically, the Atari electronics will save a lot of money in production
costs by focusing on the development process of new and existing products. As such, if the
website offers a platform for users to pinpoint faults in the products offered by the firm, then the
firm can correct the same as early as possible. Subsequently, this leads to a reservation of the
company’s reputation before any major damage occurs as regards to faulty company products.
Usually, when the firm’s reputation suffers, its product’s reputation also suffers. Therefore,
investing in an interactive UI will save the business a lot of money over the short-term.
In the same way, the investing in the project would lower the firm’s long term costs.
More precisely, it will allow the business to spend less money on fixing problems that the users
find as being unacceptable in the website. Instead, the firm would be able to spend more time in
conducting improvements that would make its products and the lives of its customers better.
Consequently, the firm would be able to invest in other projects instead of fixing problems
associated with a poor website design. Over the long term period, the firm would save a lot of
money, hence allowing it to expand its operations and become more profitable.
Regardless of the benefits, the firm will incur various costs to ensure that the project
materializes into a success. Fundamentally, the firm will have to spend money on experts in
human factors and usability to enhance the website. Approximately, the firm will part with a
daily rate of $650 for a period of five days. Although this can be costly for the firm in the short
run, the long term benefits associated with the new website would be manifold. In this regard, it
is recommended that the firm should consider investing in the project. The benefits associated
with the project significantly outweigh its costs.

Human Factors 4
An Analysis and Evaluation of Atari Best Electronics
The Attractiveness of the design
At first glance, the Atari Best Electronics website is unattractive and complicated.
Primarily, its user interface and design is highly intricate and complex, and the user might be
tempted to log out of the sight. What is more, the graphics are poor and low quality. One may
argue that the firm did not put much thought in the designing of the website. As a result, the firm
may lose many potential clients as they are unable to navigate swiftly through the site.
Furthermore, the organization of the various aspects and products offered by the firm are put in a
disorganized manner. Generally, the website is poorly created.
Navigation
It is worth noting that navigating through the website is tedious and mind numbing.
Ordinarily, navigation plays a major role in creating a memorable user experience, thereby
allowing an extended stay on the website. Therefore, the poor navigation system on the website
affects user engagement, thereby discouraging users. Thus, it is recommended that the firm
should improve its navigation system to possess a distinct, simple and consistent steering. It
should ensure that the site is visually separated in a manner that allows the user to find a
particular thing. It should include a menu button hat distinguishes between various texts. Menu
links should also be included to help users to easily figure out their direction.
Overall Utility of the site

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In general, the usability of the site by a user is limited. Fundamentally, this is due to the
fact that the initial web designer did not keep in mind its usability. By and large, usability
pertains to the quality of users experience when interacting with the system. In most cases, this
aspect is necessary for the website to be successful. As such, if the website is difficult to use,
then visitors tend to leave (Nielsen, 2012). Likewise, when users get lost while navigating
through the site, then they give up and look for another website that offers the same product.
Notably, the overall utility of the Atari website is hindered by the fact that users cannot easily
locate the information that they need, and are forced to leave the website. In turn, this becomes
costly for the firm both in the long run and the short term period.
Usability goals
The first and second usability goal for the Atari website is speed and learnability.
Primarily, this goal relates to the measure of how easy it is to learn the website and how fast it is
for first time users to complete the task (Cao, 2013). Notably, the now level for this goal is
extremely slow. At the moment, first time users take a long time to complete any activity on the
website because its learnability is low. Everything is everywhere as it lacks a systematic
mechanism. Therefore, learnability goal seeks to ensure that users can quickly and easily locate
what they need in the website (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). The threshold acceptance level is set at a
few minutes after login into the website. The achievement of this goal would ensure that users
can access the information instantaneously.
In the same view, the third goal pertains to the effectiveness in the website design.
Largely, this is a measure of how well the website does what it is intended to do. For this goal,
the now level indicates that the website is ineffective. In order to determine the effectiveness of

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the new design, the team shall consider how easily users can locate information they seek from
the website (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). In this case, we shall determine how users can easily
complete their purchase. Primarily, this goal will be measured using task-completion rates.
Furthermore, the fourth goal is satisfaction. Profoundly, this goal seeks to determine how
satisfied the visitors were while interacting with the website (Cao, 2013). Currently, the
satisfaction level is below average. To measure its achievement, the firm will use visitor ratings
of the website. The ratings would range from one to five, with five indicating the highest level of
satisfaction (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). The acceptable satisfaction threshold is to be set at 3, and
anything below that will indicate that the website remains unsatisfactory for its users.
The fifth goal is the accuracy level of the website. In this requirement, the designer seeks
to reduce the number of attempts that a client makes to complete a particular task. As such, the
company seeks to minimize the time wasted on the website due to making various unsuccessful
attempts (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). The now level for this requirement indicates high level of
inaccuracy. To measure the goal, the owner will use the average number of users who are able to
complete the task on the first attempt.
On the other hand, the sixth goal focuses on the overall success of the website. In this
goal, the team seeks to measure the percentage of visitors who successfully completed their
intended tasks on the website (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). Notably, the now level for this goal
indicates a low overall success. In future, the attainment of the goal shall be measured in terms of
the number of users who are able to find complete their task successfully. The acceptable rate is
set at 95 percent of the users must report to have successfully completed a specified task on the
website.

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The seventh and eighth goals include returning users and memorability. Essentially,
memorability is the measure of how quickly visitors can remember how to navigate through the
website (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). The team intends to make the website memorable so that users
can easily remember how to utilize its resources in the future (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). In the
same manner, the firm intends to increase the number of returning users on the site.
Fundamentally, the attainment of this goal can be measured using the rate of return customers to
the website.
Lastly, the ninth and tenth goal pertain to the utility and efficiency of the website.
Primarily, utility seeks to measure the functionality of the website, and whether it offers exactly
what its users seek (“Usability Goals,” n.d.). At the moment, the utility level of the website is
below the acceptable threshold. This goal will be measured in terms of the overall functionality
of the site. Lastly, efficiency is only achieved after the utility and effectiveness of the site has
been established (“Usability Goals,” n.d.).
In order to complete the evaluation process and determine the now level of the website’s
usability goal, the team conducted a simple user survey. Primarily, the survey involved observing
and recording users carrying out specified tasks on the Atari website. The sample comprised of
five individuals seeking to locate and purchase products from the website. From the survey, it
was noted that all users encountered much difficulties in locating and purchasing the products
they intended from the website.

Human Factors 8
Human factors in Atari’s Web Design
On the whole, the website failed to address many key human factors in its design. To
begin with, the website failed to address the hierarchy. Noteworthy, visual hierarchy entails
putting the elements that the firm intends the reader to see and percept first when they open the
website. In this case, everything on the site looks the same and it is difficult for the user to
distinguish important elements. In addition, the design failed to address the aspect of measure.
Primarily, this concept refers to the width of text. Often, this aspect is put under consideration to
allow the human eye to comfortably travel across the page and easily read its contents (Turnbull.
2011). On the website, the some texts are too long and interlock with each other in an
unappealing manner.
Furthermore, the web designer failed to address the aspect of text alignment and scaling.
Text alignment is important in making the text on the website appealing and readable. On the
other hand, scaling is vital to allow the user to zoom in and out while manipulating data on the
site (Shakuary, n.d.). In the same way, the design was unsuccessful in creating the appropriate
weight of the text’s font. Using different forms of font weight is crucial in adding some subtle
definition to the text and determining the importance of the text (Turnbull, 2011). However, in
this case, the weight balance was generally poor.
Prototyping technique
For Atari website, a low fidelity prototyping-story boarding technique would be more
appropriate. Mainly, this is because the prototype allows for client feedback that is relevant to
the starting point of the project (Busche, 2014). It is also simple and less time consuming but

Human Factors 9
allows for early visualization of the design solution to help provoke innovation and
improvement. The storyboarding process will be done in stages. The first step involves defining
the case and expressing the intended goals for the website and the success criteria
(“Storyboarding,” n.d.). In the second step, a white board, and other sketching tools are used to
create a storyboard prototype. At this point, PowerPoint is utilized to create the screen and
illustrate the scenario that a user of the website would go through from the beginning to the end
(“Storyboarding,” n.d.). Afterwards, the storyboard prototype is evaluated using a usability
evaluation technique like the heuristic evaluation expert view (“Prototyping,” n.d.). Lastly, the
team iterates on the storyboard prototype until the success criteria is achieved.
Key Recommendations to improve the site
 Atari electronics should balance its page. Fundamentally, a good layout will make the
page easier to read and navigate through the page.
 Keep the webpage simple by removing all the unnecessary visual elements. In turn, this
would aloe the important items on the website to stand out.
 Fix the fonts on the website. The size of the font is important in improving the readability
of the content on the page.
 Create a toolbar with links to allow visitors to easily navigate through the page. Ensure
that the toolbar is positioned in an area that is easily visible to the user.

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Reference List
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Cao, J. (2013). Usability Testing Goals: Knowing ‘Why’ Before ‘How’. [Online] Site Point.
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2017].
High Fidelity vs Low Fidelity Prototyping in Web Design and App Development (2014). [Online]
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Low Fidelity Prototyping: The Cheapest Corrections in Design Stage Ever!. [Online] Infosec
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Prototyping. [Online] Usability.gov. Available at:
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Shukairy, A. 9 Ways To Improve Bad Website Design. [Online] Readability Formulas. Available
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Storyboarding [Online] Virtual Web Design. Available at:
http://www.virtualwebdesign.ca/html/storyboarding.html [Accessed 27 August 2017].
Turnbull, C. (2011). Eight Important Factors of Good Web Typography. [Online] Evanto Tuts.
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Usability Goals: Effectiveness in Website Design [Online] Affordable Usability. Available at:
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With Measurable Usability Goals – We All Score [Online] Usability.gov. Available at:
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