University HCI Report: Unroll.Me Application Usability Evaluation

This report provides a comprehensive usability evaluation of the Unroll.Me mobile application, a tool designed to manage email subscriptions. The evaluation employs three distinct methodologies: Nielsen and Molich Heuristics, Cognitive Walkthrough, and User Testing. The Heuristic Evaluation assesses the overall application based on established HCI principles. The Cognitive Walkthrough focuses on a specific feature, such as email synchronization and information retrieval, examining its ease of use and identifying potential usability issues. User Testing involves gathering feedback from participants interacting with the app to understand their experiences and identify areas for improvement. The report details the findings from each method, including specific issues, observations, and recommendations for enhancing the application's usability and user experience. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and suggestions for future development, emphasizing the importance of user-centered design in mobile application development.

Running head: ADVANCED HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
ADVANCED HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary:
In this world of growing importance of mobile technology, the developers have come
up with different kinds of applications for the benefits of the customers. Technological
improvements have helped in the massive growth of the user applications in the different
organizations. The range of services form the different organizations is being improved to a
great extent and it is also ensured that the applications are usable and user friendly. Usability
refers to the degree of user friendliness of the applications. Evaluation of usability determines
the different parameters such as methods of data collection and how they will be used for the
efficient analysis of data. The following report will explain the human computer interactions
and the associated parameters for the application called “unroll.me”. By the end of the report,
the reader will have a clear idea on the applications and how it can be efficiently designed.

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Table of Contents
Executive summary:...................................................................................................................1
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Nielsen and Molich Heuristics:..................................................................................................3
1. System status visibility:...................................................................................................3
2. The system as well as the real world should match:.......................................................4
3. Control and freedom of users:.........................................................................................4
4. Standards and consistencies:...........................................................................................4
5. Prevention of errors:........................................................................................................4
6. Recognizing rather than recalling...................................................................................4
7. Flexibility as well as efficiency in usability:...................................................................5
8. Design that is aesthetic as well as minimalist:................................................................5
9. Help users in recognizing, diagnosing as well as recovering from errors:.....................5
10. Help as well as documentation....................................................................................5
Cognitive walkthrough analysis of the Unroll.me application:.................................................5
User testing (UT):......................................................................................................................8
11. Participants:.................................................................................................................8
12. Laboratory:..................................................................................................................9
13. Tasks:...........................................................................................................................9
Conclusions:.............................................................................................................................10

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References:...............................................................................................................................12
Introduction:
Technological advances are seen in different field in today’s world in most of the
fields. Due to the increasing market competition in the different industries, the organizations
are coming up with more user friendly and innovative mobile applications for its customers
so that they can access their products and services much easily. This also ensures improved
customer satisfaction. Through the advent of the mobile technologies and applications, the
companies also aim to generate more revenue and increase the sales figures of their products.
The mobile applications are designed as such so that their usability is also improved and the
customers find it easy to work on such applications. The following report will highlight the
different aspects of applications known as unroll.me and how its designing process can be
evaluated using three most notable methodologies, which are Nielsen and Molich Heuristics,
cognitive walkthrough as well as user testing.
Nielsen and Molich Heuristics:
Jakob Nielsen came up with 10 general guidelines or principles for human computer
interaction design. These are known as "heuristics" they help in establishing the broad rules
in formulating the guidelines for interaction and they are not the guidelines for any specific
set of usability’s (Bligård and Osvalder 2013). The following ten points will help in
explaining the ten aspects of the Nielsen and Molich Heuristics for the unroll.me application.
1. System status visibility:
The system using the unroll.me application should always be able to keep the
users informed about any process that is going on through appropriate feedback

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mechanisms in a quick span of time (Salgado and Freire 2014). It can ensure a proper
feedback system.
2. The system as well as the real world should match:
The system should be able to speak the language that is understandable for the
users, with phrases, concepts as well as words, familiar with the users, rather than terms
that are system-oriented (Fung et al. 2016). Conventions, which are real world, should be
followed, thereby making the information appear natural as well as logical in order.
3. Control and freedom of users:
System functions are often chosen by the users by mistake and they will need a mark
clearly stating "emergency exit" (Georgsson, Staggers and Weir 2016). That will help in
leaving the unwanted state without the extended dialogue to be used. It also supports the undo
as well as redo operations.
4. Standards and consistencies:
Users should not be wondering regarding different words, actions as well as situations
that may have the same meaning.
5. Prevention of errors:
Messages that are better than the error messages should be designed carefully, which
avoids problematic situations in the first place. Error-prone situations can either be eliminated
or they can be checked and presented to the users with options of confirmation option even
before committing the actions to the end users.

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6. Recognizing rather than recalling
User memory load of the unroll.me application should be minimized by making the
options visible to the users (Georgsson, Weir and Staggers 2014). The user need not
remember information from the different parts of the dialogues.
7. Flexibility as well as efficiency in usability:
Accelerators, which are often unseen by amateur users can help in speeding up the
interaction levels for the expert users and benefit inexperienced as well as experienced users.
8. Design that is aesthetic as well as minimalist:
Irrelevant information should not be present in the Unroll.Me applications so that the
users only get to see and use the functions required by them in real world scenarios.
9. Help users in recognizing, diagnosing as well as recovering from errors:
Error messages or exceptions in the Unroll.Me application should be showed using
easy user understandable language just to precisely signify the issue, and suggest a solution in
a constructive manner.
10. Help as well as documentation
Even though the system can be used properly even without any kind of
documentation, it may be crucial at times to provide the necessary help (Hermawati and
Lawson 2016). Such information about the Unroll.me application can be searched easily and
user task can be focussed.
Cognitive walkthrough analysis of the Unroll.me application:
Firstly, according to the cognitive walkthrough of the unroll.me application it has to
be firstly identified if the unroll.me application is suitable for the android phones and if the
users can effectively use it. Unroll.me is a mobile application and therefore it can be used in

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the android smart phones. Secondly, a specific task has to be chosen for the unroll.me
application. The chosen task is the feature of the application that allows synchronizing with
the emails of the users and collecting data such as transactional receipts, subscriptions with
other sites etc (Hasan 2013). Thirdly, it is evaluated if the selected task of collecting
information from the user emails have proper usability and if improvements are being made
to further develop the feature of the application. Lastly, it is evaluated if the right actions are
being completed after the complete evaluation of the application.
The chosen task is email synchronizing using unroll.me with ability to collect
information such as transactional receipts, subscriptions etc. (Reynaga, Chiasson and
Oorschot 2015). In order to analyse the feature three main tasks were performed on the
application, which were user registration, searching the information such as transaction
receipts, subscription newsletters and other information in the email of the users as well as
the chatting feature with other users using the email client (Jadhav, Bhutkar and Mehta 2013).
The following are the results obtained:
Action Failure description Identified problems
User registration Registration is the first and
most important in the usage
cycle of the unroll.me
application usage cycle that
helps in determining the
usability of the application
for the users.
Excessive text usage
Searching for information In order to search multiple
emails with a single
keyword it is possible to
Only keywords can be used
for a bulk search. If the user
does not remember the

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search for all of them only
by using the right case
sensitive alphabets or
special characters associated
to that keyword in the right
order.
associated characters or
forget the keyword itself, it
is difficult to search for the
information.
If the appearance changes to
the offline mode, chat
messages through the email
client can automatically be
re directed to the user’s
inbox in order to enable the
user to view it later (Jadhav,
Bhutkar and Mehta 2013).
This reduces information
security and increases the
vulnerability to cybercrime
by hackers.
Users need to logout and
then again log in to get
notifications of any new
settings in the unroll.me
application (Lira et al.
2014). This is a tedious and
complicated process.
Using the cognitive walkthrough evaluation strategy the level of understanding of the
unroll.me application has greatly improved. The necessity of the feature of synchronization
with the emails as well as retrieving transaction receipts and other information has been
clearly defined. Large amount of data has been gathered for the proper analysis of the
unroll.me application and the issues faced in the tasks have been explained in the process of
the evaluation (Jaferian et al. 2014). The real time need of an application like unroll.me in

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order to clear junk emails and other information and the associated techniques has also been
clearly defined through the cognitive walkthrough technique. It has also been identified that
there has to be a proper internet connection in order to sign up for an unroll.me, since the
application has to be first downloaded on the android phone. The method of evaluation in the
cognitive walkthrough process has the ability to sub categorise the tasks into correspondence
of the actions. It is also be used as a process of review process in order to identify issues
(Joyce and Lilley 2014). This is done through a interactive design that focusses on the user
friendliness in using the different features associated to the unroll.me application.
User testing (UT):
User testing is another important tool for evaluating the unroll.me application and it
helps the facilitator understand the usability largely. The main components of this strategy are
the participants, laboratory or the space where the evaluation needs to be carried out and the
tasks needed for the process of mobile application testing (Mateti et al. 2015). Some of the
important aspects of the user testing methodology of the unroll.me application are:
- Testing an existing product that has been created or which is being planned to be
redesigned.
- Testing the applications/products from the different market competitors’ in order to
understand if this product is on the same lines with any of its market competitors.
- Testing the product that is presently under study.
It is extremely important to allow multiple series of usability tests for the unroll.me
application. Ideally, different points will be tested simultaneously: one at a point that is
midway with certain clickable prototypes and once the product is finally rebuilt and its
functionality tested.

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11. Participants:
The participants are the users who will using the unroll.me mobile application in order
to provide feedback on the application for its further improvement.
12. Laboratory:
It has to be understood that the equipment that are needed for carrying out the analysis
using the user testing strategy, need not be very complicated. It should be capable enough just
to capture the required information at the time of the sessions using mediums that are easy to
comprehend such as video footages. Most importantly, it should capture whatever the
participants tell as well as their expressions in explaining something. A lot can be deduced by
seeing at the expressions as well as the reactions of the participants (Plechawska, Mora and
Wójcik 2013). The test results will be analysed form the point of view of the reactions of the
participants. Their facial expressions as well as body language is capable of giving valuable
information at the time of conducting the testing of the unroll.me application using user
testing. A low cost screen recording software can be used in order to record the screen of the
smart phone while the users are using the application in order to understand their using habits
of the software. Cost effective solutions such as using the mobile version of a screen
recording software such as Screen recording “Screenflow” which can enable the users to
make use of the front cameras on their smart phones to capture what is being done on the
mobile screen by also capturing their faces on a real time basis.
13. Tasks:
The task that will be performed in the user testing strategy will also be same as that
used for the cognitive walkthrough method. The email synchronization feature will be used
for the unroll.me application that should also be able to collected details such as transaction
receipts and subscription newsletters from other websites the user is subscribed to. The users

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have to open the application on their smart phones and use this feature while the screen is
recorded in order to help the facilitator understand the using habits of the users (Raynor
2013). The users will be performing this task in the laboratory that will be assigned to them
and their entire suing will be recorded using the screen recording software for detailed future
analysis of the unroll.me application.
Figure: User testing cycle for the unroll.me application (Torrente et al. 2013).
From the above diagram, it can be stated that in the user testing methodology, each of
these points can help in offering something different that can help in learning and addressing
the shortcomings in the different assumptions (Gómez, Caballero and Sevillano 2014). This
helps in determining the concrete final output of the evaluation. The thumb rule states “The
earlier the usability test is run, the better output it provides”. Preparations taken more in
advance can yield more accurate and better results.

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Conclusions:
Therefore it can be concluded from the above report that the unroll.me application can
be effective used by the users provided it is developed in the right way and the shortcomings
of the application are correctly identified by the designers. This can help the designers to
eliminate the issues and remove the bugs that are presently there in the application. The
report has studied the unroll.me application using the three different approaches, which are
Nielsen and Molich Heuristics, cognitive walkthrough as well as user testing. It can be
deduced that the participants have to be carefully chosen and the results from the testing
processes have to be analysed in details in order to remove the bugs and ensure it is a perfect
user-friendly mobile friendly application for the users. This will ensure better user
friendliness of the applications as well as better customer feedbacks that can help to attract
more users in the future.

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