ITC504 Interface Usability: Assessment of Local Farm Shop Application

This report presents a comprehensive interface usability assessment of a local farm shop application, designed to facilitate services like product offerings (food, gifts, wines) and restaurant hall bookings. The assessment follows a structured approach, including wireframe design, alternative selection based on heuristic principles, prototype development, and evaluation through peer feedback. The application's design emphasizes user-friendliness, incorporating features such as customer registration/login, categorized product displays, and dedicated pages for 'About Us' and feedback. Key usability principles, like consistency, error prevention, and flexibility, are addressed through elements like a persistent main menu, logout options, and error acknowledgment messages. The report also discusses user requirements, design justifications, and a comparative analysis with a similar application, Beadlam Grange Farm Shop. The final prototype reflects improvements based on peer feedback, ensuring a well-documented and heuristically sound design.

ITC504: Interface Usability
Assessment 5
Student Name: Abdul Aqeel
Student ID: 11612827

Abdul Aqeel 11612827
Table of Contents
Abstract.................................................................................................................................................2
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Reflection of Local farm Shop application.............................................................................................4
a. User interface design.................................................................................................................4
b. User requirement......................................................................................................................4
c. Factors influenced.....................................................................................................................5
d. Discussion of similar Local Farm Shop interface........................................................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................6
References.............................................................................................................................................7
Appendix...............................................................................................................................................8
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Abstract
Aim: I have designed the local farm shop interface for the mobile application. The designed
application for the shop will facilitate numerous services like offering numerous products of different
categories that are food, gifts, and wines.
Procedure: The designed wireframes in the tool have noticeably stated all the functionalities that
application has. The assessment has gone through the four stages, wherein the first stage two
alternatives were designed and the presentation was prepared to describe each alternative in detail.
Further, in the second phase, the best out of the two alternatives are selected based on different
heuristic principles of the interface design. After the selection of my second alternative, the
designing took place for the local farm shop prototype considering all the usability principles and the
application requirements. In the third stage, the designed application has been evaluated by the
other group members and a feedback or review is collected. The fourth and the final stage are for
the preparation of the final prototype for the local farm shop solving all the problem identified by
the other group member in the feedback during the third stage.
Result After designing the complete prototype of the local farm shop application, a brief
documentation is done for the detailed description of the interface components and the navigation
of the application.
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Introduction
The application for local farm shop will facilitate numerous services like offering numerous products
of different categories that are food, gifts, and wines. The farm shop also gives the restaurant hall
booking services to the users for the different parties and occasions. The interface design of the
application will have numerous functions like customer registering and login page, category page for
differentiating products category, about us page for the shop and its service description, feedback
page for customer satisfaction and more. The designed application is consistent as it contains the
main menu on all the screens and also has log out button on each page for meeting consistency
principle as well as the user flexibility principle. The booking page is designed separately where the
user can select from different halls based on the number of persons and the packages per person
based on prices. The category is having a distinguished category like food, gift, special offers and
drinks for distinguishing among the products.
The designing of this application user interface is based on the heuristic principles stated by the
Nielsen. The principles given are consistency, error prevention, flexibility, visibility of system status
and more. These principles are achieved by the application by including the different components
like log-out button, main menu, and back button on each interface screen, by creating a contact us
page and feedback page, by giving error acknowledgment message on wrong inputs and more.
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Reflection of Local farm Shop application
a. User interface design
The designed user interface facilitates numerous services to the customer provided by the local farm
shop. The farm shop sells a different product like food items, wines, and other drinks and also the
assorted gifts. The user can select from the number of products available and can buy them as per
he wishes. The application also provides the hall booking facilities of the restaurant for different
occasions and parties based on the number of person maximum up to 50. The application also
provides different special offers on many numbers of selected products. For availing these offers and
services customer first need to register themselves on the application and the existing customer can
easily login to the application by validated credentials (Brainvire, 2016).
Justification
All the heuristic principles stated are followed by the designed application interface and is made
more appealing to the customers by adding the color and background to the application. The farm
shop also gives the restaurant hall booking services to the users for the different parties and
occasions. The designing of the interface is done through the application titled Balsamiq (Yáñez
Gómez, Cascado Caballero, & Sevillano, 2014).
b. User requirement
The designing of application is done on the basis of the requirements provided by the local farm
shop. The designed local farm application is made more appealing by adding the background and is
easy to explore including all the features and operations. The application of farm shop is secure to
use as the application could be explored without the authenticated login or registration ( Page,
2014).
Justification
The interface designed for the local farm shop has different benefits as it provides the door delivery
of the product and service offered. The restaurant hall booking is one tap away from the customers.
For more user independency the back button and log out button is added to the entire application
screen and further, the back button is added for flexibility and easy exploration. The designed
application is secure to use. For each product, a brief description is displayed by clicking the product
image. The cart is there to add the products and the customer can also avail the discounts by simply
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entering the loyalty discount code provided by the local farm shop for more attractive prices. At last,
the user gets redirected to the payment page for booking and order confirmation (Johnson, 2013).
All the principles are achieved while designing the application that is visibility of system, error
prevention, help documentation, flexibility, consistency and more (Nielsen, 2013).
c. Factors influenced
The local farm shop application is a user-friendly application because of the functionality added to it.
The user first login or register in the application and explores the services offered that is home
delivery of the product and one tap hall booking in the restaurants on the occasion for the parties.
The user can log out of the application anytime he wants to by simply clicking logout button present
on each screen. The application is easy to explore as all the screens have the main menu for direct
navigation. If the user stuck on any page he could simply go back to the previous page by clicking the
back button present on every single screen of the application. The user can update his details by
clicking the update details button on the register page and can reset their password on forgetting
the previous password. The application has the cart where the product could be seen that user
wishes to buy and can proceed for the further payment. The minimalistic and aesthetic design
principle is included in the application design by simply adding the appropriate and useful content
only (Brisebois, Drummond, Mehta, et.al. 2017).
d. Discussion of similar Local Farm Shop interface
Beadlam Grange Farm Shop
It is the farm shop and the tearoom application that provides the local farm livestock items, frozen
ready food, and more items. They also serve different meals at their granary tearoom. The
application contains the contact details of the shop and its service delivering time. The bedlam
grange also offers the different gifting options. The bedlam grange farm shop also offers salon
services and caravan camping services to their users.
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Conclusion
Here in this assessment, I have given the brief reflection on my overall understanding of the
applications user interface designing. All the functionalities and services of the application are briefly
discussed and heuristic principles are thoroughly explained and understood. A brief discussion is
made for the user requirement and the interface design, further, the justification is given how the
application fulfilled these requirements. For the similar kind of Bedlam Grange farm shop, a
discussion is made to evaluate their farm shop application. This assessment report includes the final
prototype decision. In this report, the designed principles of the complete design are made after
resolving the issues identified by other group members. This reflection report also discusses the
heuristic principles stated by Nielsen applied in the application.
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References
Brainvire. (2016, Jun 30). Know The Importance Of Wireframe In Mobile App Development [Blog
Post]. Retrieved from https://www.brainvire.com/blog/know-the-importance-of-wireframe-in-
mobile-app-development/
Nielsen, J. (2013). 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design | Design Principles
FTW. Designprinciplesftw. Retrieved from https://www.designprinciplesftw.com/collections/10-
usability-heuristics-for-user-interface-design.
Brisebois, M. A., Drummond, B., Mehta, A., Chene, M., & Flannigan, M. (2017). U.S. Patent No.
9,836,446. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Johnson, J. (2013). Designing with the mind in mind: simple guide to understanding user interface
design guidelines. Elsevier.
Page, T. (2014). Skeuomorphism or flat design: future directions in mobile device User Interface (UI)
design education. International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, 8(2), 130-142.
Yáñez Gómez, R., Cascado Caballero, D., & Sevillano, J. L. (2014). Heuristic evaluation on mobile
interfaces: A new checklist. The Scientific World Journal, 2014.
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Appendix
Figure 1 Homepage
Figure 2 Login page
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Figure 3 registration page
Figure 4 about us page
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Figure 5 Booking page
Figure 6 category page
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Figure 7 Contact us page
Figure 8 feedback page
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