E-Commerce Usability: Human Factors Evaluation of Atari Website

This report presents a comprehensive usability evaluation of the Atari website, focusing on human factors in system design. It includes personas representing different user types, an analysis of usability priorities, and a usability specification outlining key areas for improvement. The evaluation methodology is described, followed by a detailed critique of the website's design, navigation, and user experience. The report identifies strengths and weaknesses of the existing website, such as the presence of a company logo and customer feedback, while also highlighting flaws like the lack of a proper homepage design, dynamic settings, and a built-in search engine. Recommendations are made for enhancing the website's usability and user-friendliness to better cater to a diverse range of users. Desklib offers a variety of study tools including similar assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: COMPUTING
Computing
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1COMPUTING
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Part One: Personas...........................................................................................................................2
Part Two: Experience Priorities.......................................................................................................4
Part Three: Usability Specification..................................................................................................6
Part four: Evaluation Methodology...............................................................................................12
Part Five: Evaluation.....................................................................................................................15
Part Six: Critique...........................................................................................................................18
Part Seven: Assignment Report....................................................................................................19
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................19
Reference.......................................................................................................................................21

2COMPUTING
Introduction
Human factors in system design is a design of a system and a behavioural process which
incorporates the question that a designer must answer. This focuses on the concepts that are the
very foundation of the design process and also includes the behavioural aspects of the system
design and the design process. Special effort is put during the process to take into account the
various human factors and special emphasis is put on the users that ware handicapped and
elderly. The main application of the human factor is the inclusion of the physiological and the
psychological principles in the product design and in the systems and processes (Salvendy 2012).
The purpose of considering the human factor is to increase the interaction between a human and
a thing of interest, enhancing the comfort and safety, reduction of the human error. This
incorporation of the human factor in the designing process is actively used in the field of
designing of a user interface, user experience, visual design, interaction design, anthropometry,
physiology, industrial design, biomechanics, engineering, sociology and psychology. The
incorporation of the human element is done through a scientific method in order to study the
behaviour of the human element. The resultant data are used to actively incorporate into the
designing process (Stanton et al. 2017). This study is based on the heuristic evaluation of a
website named Atari and presenting a detailed analysis of the usability of the website.
Part One: Personas
For the purpose of the considering the human factors in the system design, 4 different
personas are created for the effective analysis of the of the usability of a website which is titled
Atari-best electronics. The 4 different personas selected will serve as hypothetical users of the
interactive design. The first user of the system is a teenager who plays Atari games; the second
user who owns an electronics repair shop who is looking for Atari integrated circuits, controllers,

3COMPUTING
oscillators and transistors; the third user is an elderly person who is visually impaired and since
his adulthood uses the Atari and frequently visit the Atari site in order to keep a note of the new
and the updated products; the fourth persona is a typewriter and frequently visits the website to
buy the Atari keyboards and wishes to upgrade his old Atari keyboards.
The first persona is a teenager that plays the Atari games like the Jaguar XE games,
Lynx, 7800, 5200, 2600. This teenager visits the Atari website and exclusively looks for the
Atari games and the gaming controllers and joysticks that will give him the best gaming
experience. The specific products that teenager looks for are the Atari joysticks and the
controllers and jaguar joysticks for the older gaming systems. The second persona is an owner of
an electronics repair shop and frequently visits the website in order to purchase the buy monitor
cables, printer accessories. He also looks for the Atari custom integrated circuits, transistors,
Atari 68000 and 6500 integrated circuits, disk controller integrated circuits, Atari oscillators and
crystals, and other types of Atari integrated circuits. This electronic repair shop owner also buys
other types products like the Atari monitor cables, TV RF cables, TV switch boxes and the Atari
power supplies. The third persona is an elderly person and he since his adulthood has been using
the Atari products like the Atari keyboards, monitor cables, games, gaming joysticks and the
gaming controllers, Atari computers, printers, modems, software and still now finds it interesting
to keep a track of the different types of the products that the Atari company is still bringing to the
market. This elderly although is visually impaired and finds it a difficult to search through the
long list of the texts on the website. The fourth persona is a professional typewriter and uses the
Atari keyboard exclusively in order to type fast and reliably. He also has some old Atari
keyboards that are damaged and the wishes to fix the same with the upgrades and parts. Finally,
the personas are created with respect to their different needs and the way they will be using and

4COMPUTING
interacting with the Atari website. The personas are the part of the system design, whose
feedbacks and the nature of interaction will the impact the future design of the Atari website. The
human factors are users of the Atari website and the analysis is actually based on how the
different will interact and how user friendly the webpage is.
Part Two: Experience Priorities
The user experience priorities of any system depend on the how user-friendly the whole system
is and how interactive a webpage is with respect to the different types of the user. Web page
designing is one of the critical parts of the website development. The design itself helps the users
to bind itself with the parent company that are sourcing the products via the website. The rates of
the usability of a website must be varied so that it can cater to the needs of the different types of
the users that can belong to any sort of age. Considering the usability of the Atari website, the
first thing that lacks is a proper homepage design. the webpage is a cluster of coloured texts all
over the site. This homepage design has the priority with respect to the other kinds of heuristic
issues. The home page must be well designed which must give it an attractive look at the same
time will minimize the hassles for the users that are desperately looking for a specific product.
the home page provides a single link to all its products and this lack any kind of order or
filtration. The second most important part of the website is that it is a static website and lack any
kind of dynamic setting. the whole website is filled up with texts and the home page itself
provides the products in an unorderly fashion (figure 1). The webpage lacks the visual appeal
and the only the important parts are highlighted is by the usage of the different coloured texts.
The next part is the proper usage of the website logo, the Atari website only flaunts a logo of

5COMPUTING
shining texts that reflect the name Atari. This is one of the major flaws of the logo itself (Atari -
Best Electronics Home 2018).
Figure 1: Atari homepage [source: Atari - Best Electronics Home 2018]
The company logo has no colour resemblance with the one provided in the Atari product
packages. This might can create an element of confusion within the minds of the new users that
will visit the website for the first time. The other major flaws are the long lines of the texts that
are highlighting the customer feedback. This might seem a nice strategy to attract to attract new
customers and earn the faith of the new customers and users. The worst part of this strategy is
that the design itself is a let-down and this has led to giving a bitter look at the webpage. The
webpage again lacks the design elements and the scrolling through the webpage seems unending
and the vital information of the Atari company contact number is presented only at the end of the
webpage. Although it is a minor fact, the information of the Atari is provided at the end which
not applicable to the new users and the customers of the company. Keeping the information at

6COMPUTING
the end of the webpage can be a bit confusing for the new customers that are willing find the
information of the Atari company (Atari - Best Electronics Home 2018). The other flaws that are
visible on the webpage are the lack of the information regarding the various kinds of the products
that are available for the upgrades and the products that are already in the upgraded form. The
lack of the built-in search engine within the website makes it difficult for the users to search for
the products that they are looking for. The site index is the only link in the site that provides an
exhaustive list of the products that are neither arranged in an alphabetical form nor are
categorized into different sections (figure 2).
Figure 2: Atari index page [source: Atari - Best Electronics Home 2018]
Part Three: Usability Specification
The creation of the usability information with respect to the system (webpage) will
require a different kind of the tools that can measure as well assess the current design and will

7COMPUTING
also provide an insight of the new design that the revamped website will be based upon. The
criteria used for the assessment are the presence of a well-designed navigation bar (Hui et al.
2012), the extent of the usability and the user-friendliness of the website, the offer on the
products are highlighted with visual graphics, the presence of highlight on the most popular and
the most affordable products, the option to zoom the products that will provide a magnified and a
closer view, detailed information of the products along with the separate section of customer
review and ratings, presence of the filters that will enable the filtering products based on the
price and category, presence of a search bar or an option to search the product with ease, the
presence of customer feedback and how well the customers can reach to the technical department
regarding any technical issue (Huang and Benyoucef 2013).
In order to assess the existing website, it is necessary to point out the positive points of
the Atari website. The assessment will be again based on the criteria already mentioned in the
Existing website-
 The home page of the Atari website clearly shows the logo of the company at the
left-hand side corner. The logo showcases "Atari best electronics". Just beneath
the logo is a short information about the company and the what it is specialized in.
The top section even provides an index page which lists all the products available
on the website (figure 1).
 The index page of the site includes the all the product name as well as the
upgrades that are available for the products. The index even has a dialogue box
which can easily help to bookmark the site in the internet explorer. the best part of
the index page is the listing of the products have been done with coloured texts.
this usually helps in catching the attention of the users (figure 2).

8COMPUTING
 One of the highlighting sections in the homepage is the presence of a link that has
all the products that are arranged chronologically. This section of the webpage
provides all the information from the year 2002 to date.
 The awards are that the Atari company received due to its excellent product line
are present in the home page which reflects the reliability of the Atari products.
 The next best part of the Atari website is the short section of customer feedback
and it again highlights the excellency of the Atari products. This section has the
exclusive mention of the customers and the comments in different coloured texts.
 The homepage even has the mention of the products as eco-friendly and the
company is committed to recycling its products.
 The site even has the exclusive mention that the product if bought from the parent
is a lot cheaper in comparison to the buying the same product on the eBay. This
can effectively induce the customers to buy directly from the website (figure 3).

9COMPUTING
Figure 3: information on E-bay [source: Atari - Best Electronics Home, 2018]
 The home also highlights the best products that have received the recent technical
buff and upgrades and along with the products that are exclusively made by Atari.
And even highlights the products that were previously not there in the stock and
currently has replenished stock.
 The end section of the website also has mentioned about the contact information
through which the clients and the users of the website can easily contact with
Atari sales and customer support. The contact information has mentioned about
the fax number, phone number, email and postal address (figure 4).
Figure 4: End section showing contact information [source: Atari - Best Electronics Home, 2018]
 For a visually impaired person, the size of the texts is perfect and the coloured
texts provide a highlighting factor to the important parts of the website.

10COMPUTING
New design ideas-
 The new design of the Atari website will base upon the criteria that are already
mentioned at the beginning of this section. The first and the foremost important
redesign of the homepage must come in the form of removing the static part of the
website and redesign it with the dynamic elements. The dynamic elements must
be integrated so that the users and the customers can actively interact with the
webpage. The present design is a cluster of words and it has lacks the proper
design and presentation (Nixon 2012).
 The second most important part of the webpage is the lack of any navigation bar.
Thus, a navigation bar at the top part of the webpage can help in proper
navigation into the other section of the website. There are plenty of section that
can effectively be sectioned and can be put into different sections like the Home,
Products, Contact Us, Customer Feedback, Sign in. Providing the webpage with
the navigation help to create subsections that help the users to effectively and
actively interact with the webpage (Power et al. 2013).
 The Atari website lacks a search section and this reduces the effectivity of the
present design. The presence of the search bar helps a user to easily search for an
existing product and at the same time helps in discovering new products from the
website’s database (Dulaney et al. 2016).
 The next important criteria are the presence of the filters in the search section.
Filters easily help to segregate the product according to the price and
specification. The site itself has plenty of products that are already piled up on the
index page and this can be effectively given an easy sorting design through the

11COMPUTING
application of the filters. Filters also help in making the search more specific and
reduce the hassles during searching a specific product (Moran and Hunt 2014).
Part four: Evaluation Methodology
The heuristic evaluation of a webpage is based on certain criteria which are already
mentioned in the previous section. The heuristic evaluation primality includes the errors which
are encountered in the design, user interface, usability, and its interaction with the users.
Considering the homepage of the Atari website, this homepage is the ultimate interface that
provides the first and the last impression on the minds of a user. An analogy can be drawn with
the front-page of a newspaper which must be attractive enough to attract and retain a reader.
Small changes made on the home page of a website can have drastic effects on the minds of its
users (Daoud, Naqvi and Ahmad 2014). There is a certain aspect of evaluation and the first
evaluation methodology used for the study is the general design of the website. The design of
the website must be user-friendly along with the plenty of scopes so that the users can interact
with the website. The scope for the users to interact and use the database of a website can
drastically increase its usability. The web content of a website must be presented in a way so that
the information is easily understandable and the users can easily reproduce the same if they want
to. The second important aspect is the accessibility of a website; it must load fast in comparison
to its rival websites so that the website can have a higher rating in the search engine. The better
scope of accessibility can be helpful in the long run, websites that load faster are always
preferred by its users. Thus, integration of the website with the database must be done smoothly.
An e-commerce website has a lot of international users and thus a parent needs to have its
domain in the different countries. This reduces the hassle both for the e-commerce company and
the users. Language barriers are one of the major problems when catering to the needs of the