Usability Evaluation of an Interactive System

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USABILITY EVALUATION OF AN INTERACTIVE SYSTEM
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Part ONE: The interactive system and its users: E-commerce website
An interactive system is defined as a computer system that interacts with people. Some of the
examples include; government and e-commerce websites. This paper has focused on e-commerce
websites. E-commerce is the practice of carrying out business transactions online over the
internet (Hussain and Mkpojiogu, 2016, p.1). The increase in the number of internet users is one
of the factors that has contributed vastly to e-commerce. There are many users of e-commerce
systems not limited to customers, managers and operators (Zhang, Wang and Zhang, 2012, p.2).
The managers view transaction reports from an e-commerce system, hence enabling them to
make some important decisions. On the other hand, customers view products that are displayed
on the website (Lee and Koubek, 2010, p.331). They can also select a particular product and add
it on the cart. The operators are responsible for updating, removing and editing product’s details.
They also ensure that operations are running smoothly. Currently, the number of e-commerce
users in the United Kingdom is approximately 45 million.
Part TWO: The use cases
Although there are several use cases in an e-commerce system, but this paper has focused on
buying of products only.
Register: The new customer registers into the system by entering his/her details such as
username, first name, second name, password, repeat password and country.
Login: After successfully registering into the system, the customer is directed to the login
page where he is required to provide his username and password.
Browse products: The customer views different products that have been displayed in the
website (Ullah, Alauddin and Zaman, 2016, p.3).

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Search product: Here, the customer searchers for a specific product that he/she is interested
to buy.
Add product to shopping cart: The customer adds a particular product that he/she is
interested to buy to the shopping cart.
Checkout: This step is concerned with payment option where the credit card is validated
(Goh et al., 2013, p.145).
Part THREE: The usability requirements
The following are usability requirements of an e-commerce system:
 Privacy policies: An e-commerce website should enhance privacy of the highest level.
Therefore, important customer’s credentials such as e-mail should not be accessed by
third parties. Apart from e-mail, the system should integrate end-to-end encryption
mechanisms, hence customer’s message cannot be accessed by other customers. The
system should not allow simple password to be used by customers. It should allow a
minimum of 10 characters so that it can prevent brute-force attacks (Sivaji et al., 2011,
p.222).
 Efficiency: The system should be able to run efficiently without errors. The transactions
should take less than 10 minutes to be completed. In contrast, the system is regarded to be
ineffective when the transaction has taken more than 20 minutes. Still on efficiency, the
customers should be able to reach to the desired state or achieve their targets in an easy
way (Chelule, Herselman and Greunen, 2010).
 User engagement: The system should be able to interact with its users. Hence, the
questions asked by customers should be answered on a real-time basis. This can be
achieved by integrating LiveChat software. The system should be able to collect and

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analyze customer’s views automatically, hence necessary steps are taken by maintenance
team to keep on improving it to increase customer satisfaction (Mitrevski and Hristoski,
2014, p.321).
 Flow: The business transactions should be completed successfully without unnecessary
delays. Different processes should run simultaneously without interfering with each
other. The system should also be consistent, hence be able to update transactions and
processes when the need arises. It should be able to maintain the same data in case of
decentralized databases (Travis, 2017).
 Error tolerance: An e-commerce system should be error-free. Hence, all transactions
should be processed correctly. Errors can lead to unnecessary disruptions and also lose of
money on the side of customers as well the company (Travis, 2017).
Part FOUR: The evaluation methodology
An e-commerce system is evaluated by systematic evaluation method whereby cognitive
walkthrough is used. This method focuses on how new system users carry out their tasks to
achieve specified goals. It also identifies some of the problems that users encounter while
carrying out different tasks. It consists of the following steps:
 Users’ selection. Here, the people who will evaluate an e-commerce system are
selected. There is a certain criteria that is used for selection. For instance, sampling
methods such as simple random sampling can be used. The following are some of the
questions that can be used to select users:
i. Are you familiar with some of the functionalities of an e-commerce system?
ii. Do you understand how transactions are carried out in an e-commerce
system?