Usability Testing for Wireframe Designs: Nielsen & Molich Heuristic Approach

This article discusses the evaluation of the usability of wireframe designs using Nielsen & Molich heuristic approach. It covers the efficiency of the interface design and its different criteria such as visibility of system status, match between system and the real world, user control and freedom, consistency and standards, error prevention, recognition rather than recall, flexibility and efficiency of use, aesthetic and minimalist design, help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors, and help and documentation. The article also includes a bibliography for further reading.

Running head: USABILITY TESTING
Usability Testing
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note

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Introduction
For the evaluation of the usability of the wireframe designs the Nielsen & Molich
heuristic approach is being adopted. The testing would help in deciding upon the efficiency of
the interface design.
Visibility of system status
The visibility of the system is efficiently designed. The system provides the user with the
efficient information on each and every screen and provides efficient information to the user
about the content of the page and provide details about the different criteria of the page such as
the cart information and order details. These are updated on their own and helps the users
understand the status of the process they are involved in.
Match between system and the real world
The match in between the system and the real world is also efficiently done. The system
display message such as Welcome message for the user and also commands that helps the user in
navigating through the systems.
User control and freedom
The design lacks in this aspect as the design does not indicate any actions that would
provide the user with the user control and freedom option. In addition to this there are no
emergency exists in the design and neither is there a scope to include a redo and undo feature in
the design.

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Consistency and standards
The design generally follows the platform conventions. They maintain the actual flow of
a general application. The design elements also are made according to the conventional design
standards. The homepage in the design displays the introduction followed by the login features
and login details. In addition to this, the registration page for the system comes after the login
page and this maintains the conventional approach to designing. This helps in maintaining the
conventions used for the designing of the interfaces.
Error prevention
The error preventing option is implemented in the system to some extent. The error
message “Hi, Please login to use the app. You can register by clicking on the user icon above.”
Provides the information to the user about the login functionality of the system. This displays
that the user cannot use the features of the application unless they login the systems. However,
there are no additional error prevention features displayed in the design. Hence this feature is
partially included in the design.
Recognition rather than recall
The application does not involve any concept in which the user is required to remember
any of their previous action on the system. However the design displays that the user is guided in
each and every step by the application itself and hence, the recognition rather than recall feature
is maintained by the application.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
The concept of the design does not include any scope for an experienced user or an
intermediate user. The system is a general e-commerce site and hence, there are scope for the

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evaluation of the website in this criteria. However in and an e-commerce system the experiences
buyers or the frequent buyers are provided with additional benefits however no such options are
presented in the design. Additionally an experienced buyer would also be able to get an
information or product more easily rather an inexperienced user. Hence, the design should not be
evaluated in this criteria.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
The design is provide with an Aesthetic and minimalist design as the dialogues in the
system does not contain any irrelevant content or content that is rarely needed. The irrelevant
information make website of the system large and slows down the system. Hence, the system
design is efficient in this aspect.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
The system Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors, there are no
additional codes that the user has to go through in the error detection methods. The system also
provides a constructive suggestion for the solution to the error and also displays the relevant
discussions for the error. The example taken here for this context is of the error message “Hi,
Please login to use the app. You can register by clicking on the user icon above.” Hence, the
system is efficient in this regard.
Help and documentation
The design contains the testimonial and contact us sections. This would help the user in
guiding through the website. However there are no documentation feature that would help the
user in navigation through the system. Hence, this aspect of the design is partially met. However
there is additional scope for improvement in this sector of the interface design.

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Bibliography
Ali, A., Alrasheedi, M., Ouda, A., & Capretz, L. F. (2015). A study of the interface usability
issues of mobile learning applications for smart phones from the users perspective. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1501.01875.
Bader, F., Schön, E. M., & Thomaschewski, J. (2017). Heuristics Considering UX and Quality
Criteria for Heuristics. International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial
Intelligence, 4(6), 48-53.
Hermawati, S., & Lawson, G. (2015). A User-Centric methodology to Establish usability
heuristics for specific domains. In Proceedings of the International Conference on
Ergonomics & Human Factors (p. 8085).
Reynaga, G., Chiasson, S., & van Oorschot, P. C. (2015, July). Heuristics for the evaluation of
captchas on smartphones. In Proceedings of the 2015 British HCI Conference (pp. 126-
135). ACM.