Usability Heuristic Evaluation of App Design: A Report

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Assessment item 3

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Usability heuristic to evaluate the design........................................................................................4
Remediation of the issues discovered..............................................................................................6
Usability strategy.............................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11
Appendix........................................................................................................................................12
List of figures
Figure 1 choose movie...................................................................................................................12
Figure 2 wrong navigation.............................................................................................................13
Figure 3 Receipt screen.................................................................................................................14
Figure 4 Payment screen................................................................................................................15
Figure 5 unnecessary button added................................................................................................16
Figure 6 inconsistent design..........................................................................................................17
Figure 7 less informative screen....................................................................................................18
Figure 8 Recognition needed.........................................................................................................19
Figure 9 No breadcrumbs..............................................................................................................20
Figure 10 incorrect linking............................................................................................................21

Introduction
The report aims to find out the issue and challenges present in the allocated app design. The
issues have to be identified in the design on the basis of each heuristic principle. On identifying
the issues, who identified the issue, its significance, the location where the issue has been
identified, the description of the issue needs to be mentioned. After this, the report covers the
recommendations to cover the issue found in the design. In the end, there is a description of
usability requirements which covers the steps to be taken before, during and after designing the
user interface.

Usability heuristic to evaluate the design
The heuristic principles used to evaluate the design are Nielson’s heuristic principles. There is
ten heuristic principle of Nielson that defines the properties a good design should possess. The
principles are listed below along with the problem identified in the design and the significance of
the problems identified.
Visibility of system status
 Issue identified by: Shoaib
 Location of issue: Choose movie screen, Receipt page, offer applied
 Description of issue: The screen contains the option to select the movie but there is no
information about the data and time, the movie is available. Also, there is no reduction in
the transaction amount.
 Why the issue is a problem: the users will not know the availability of the movie, at
which time and on which date they want to book the tickets for the movie. Also, there is
no screen for selecting the time and date. In offer applied, the amount is not updated after
applying any offer.
 Significance of issue: Major
Match between system and real world
 Issue identified by: Mujeeb
 Location of issue: Confirm payment screen
 Description of issue: on payment through credit card and debit card, after entering the
details there is an alert asking for confirmation but there is no screen for entering the OTP
received.
 Why the issue is a problem: the design is not following the principle of the match
between system and the real world because in the real world for payment through card
there should be an option of OTP, without which the transaction cannot complete.
 Significance of issue: Major
User control and freedom
 Issue identified by: Qadeer
 Location of issue: Login page, Register page, Forgot password page, verification page,
new password page, and reprint ticket
 Description of issue: all these pages don’t have a back button.
 Why the issue is a problem: the user cannot move freely between the pages and cannot
cancel an operation, if the user clicked on forgot password by mistake then there is no
option of undoing the option.
 Significance of issue: Major

Consistency and standards
 Issue identified by: Qadeer
 Location of issue: Receipt and reprinted ticket
 Description of issue: The layouts of both the receipts are different.
 Why the issue is a problem: to maintain the consistency and standards, the layout for
same receipt page should be same, but in the case when user reprints the receipt of the
ticket, the offer subscription has an option of entering the mobile number whereas in the
normal receipt there is no such option.
 Significance of issue: Minor
Error prevention
 Issue identified by: Shoaib
 Location of issue: My profile page, login page, and register page
 Description of issue: these pages don’t have the error message pop-up.
 Why the issue is a problem: there should be either alerts or error message in case if the
password entered is not fulfilling the criteria, or doesn’t match with email id, etc.
 Significance of issue: Minor
Recognition rather than recall
 Issue identified by: Shoaib
 Location of issue: Register page, offer subscription page and extend parking time.
 Description of issue: there is an input field asking for the Customer id.
 Why the issue is a problem: the user has never provided any customer id number while
signing up or during login and to perform operations such as applying offers or to extend
parking time, the user will have to enter the information. Also if there was customer id
available, the user had to remember it.
 Significance of issue: Minor
Flexibility and efficiency of use
 Issue identified by: Shoaib
 Location of issue: Choose a movie
 Description of issue: there is no search bar.
 Why the issue is a problem: to ease the use and to provide flexibility in the design so that
novice user and an expert can use the design effectively. Therefore there should be a
search bar so that a user can quickly search for a movie.
 Significance of issue: Minor
Authentic and minimalist design
 Issue identified by: Mujeeb

 Location of issue: Home page, Login page, and register page
 Description of issue: these pages contain an irrelevant button to reprint the ticket.
 Why the issue is a problem: the button has no use because unless a user registers or log
into the system, this functionality will not work and have no meaning. It is only
consuming space.
 Significance of issue: Minor
Recovery from errors
 Issue identified by: Mujeeb
 Location of issue: My profile page, login page, and register page
 Description of issue: No description of password validation.
 Why the issue is a problem: in case the user enters wrong details my mistake, there are no
error messages that will pop-up to help the user recover from the errors. The screens also
don’t have basic details such as the length of password and characters allowed etc.
 Significance of issue: Minor
Help and documentation
 Issue identified by: Qadeer
 Location of issue: In the design
 Description of issue: There is no help and documentation made available for the users.
 Why the issue is a problem: There might be the users or staff members who might
experience errors during operating the application; hence there should be a screen to
provide help and documentation to answer the user’s questions regarding its use or an
error (Galitz, 2007).
 Significance of issue: Major
Remediation of the issues discovered
Remediation of each issue discovered by each member above has been provided below.
Remediation of issues discovered by Mujeeb:
 There should be a separate screen asking for the OTP so that user can pay through the
card maintaining the security.
 All the screens which contain the option to reprint the ticket before the user has registered
into the system or the user have logged into the system should be removed and should be
made present only on the home screen which appears after the user logs into the system.
 There should be alerts on the pages which include sensitive information such as payment
and on the registration page so that the user can know what is the password, that is
accepted in the application and accordingly recover from any error that he has made.

 Linking of screens needs to be modified as some of the screens don’t have any link and
some of the buttons are not working.
Remediation of issues discovered by Shoaib:
 The information such as date and time for which the movie is being booked is
important hence there should be the option of choosing date and time first then the
only movie should be selected.
 The date and time should be present on the receipt page also.
 As soon as the user applied any offer, the discount amount should be made visible to
the user and the same should be deducted from the transaction amount.
 The pages should contain error messages when the password entered is wrong or is
not valid etc.
 Fields like “Customer ID”, for which the user has to recall the ID before performing
any operation should be avoided and simple terms such as user name, date, time, etc.
should be used instead.
 To enhance the flexibility of use, there should be a search bar to perform search
operations on the choose movie page.
Remediation of issues discovered by Qadeer:
 Most of the screen doesn’t have a back button which makes the users unable to take the
emergency exit from the screen or to quit performing the action which he/she chose by
mistake. Hence there should be back buttons on every page.
 The layout of the screen “reprint ticket” and “receipt” should be the same to maintain the
consistency in the design.
 There should be a description present at each screen to help the user understand the
functionality of each screen.
 There should be a separate option of help and documentation were the answers of
frequently asked questions, the user guide, and error solutions are present so that it can
help the users.
 In the movie description screen where the button says book tickets for this movie should
not navigate to the choose movie screen again.
Usability strategy
In order to overcome the challenges and issues faced in the designing process the following steps
need to be performed:
 Evaluation of the significance of issues found.
 If the issue is major, then evaluating the other alternatives to that issue.

 Finding the best possible alternative.
 Replacing the issue with the best possible alternative.
 Checking the functionality again after implementation.
Steps to follow before the design
 The design should meet user requirements.
 The design should be in accordance with client’s requirements.
 Before designing the app, proper research needs to be done on the demographics of the
user and client.
 Creating the user flow diagrams to ensure the proper functionality of the app.
 Designing the linking first then implementing the layouts of the screen.
 Creating clickable wireframes (Fu, Yang & Wood, 2015).
Steps to follow during the design
 Using symbols and notations instead of using text everywhere to enhance visibility.
 Placing breadcrumbs at each screen to know the linking of each screen.
 Using font size and color, background color suitable to the design in order to avoid bad
design and visibility.
 Each screen should possess similar layout and should be consistent.
 The design should be close to real-world functionality.
 The design should be minimalist by only allowing the functionality which is required and
avoiding unnecessary information (Low, Hui & See, 2015).
 The design should use a user-friendly language.
Steps to follow after the design
 Checking whether the links, buttons, icons are working properly.
 Checking the flow of screens.
 Checking and correcting the linking present between pages
 Modifying the design if it fails to meet the client’s requirements or user requirements.
 Testing of design by users and clients so as to ensure whether or not the design is
fulfilling the main requirement of the application.
 To check the response time of navigation through each page (Basson, Kanevsky &
Oblinger, 2015).
 To remove that functionality or features which makes the design less appealing?
 To check whether the design contains a common mistake of spellings or grammar.

Conclusion
The report consists of the mistakes and issues identified on the basis of heuristic principle and the
significance of the problems identified. The issues have been located and the description of each issue
has been provided. The remediation of each issue has been described. In the end, the usability strategy
that needs to be followed during, before and after the design process has been listed. The appendix
contains the screens in which the problems have been identified.

References
Galitz, W. O. (2007). The essential guide to user interface design: an introduction to GUI design
principles and techniques. John Wiley & Sons.
Fu, K. K., Yang, M. C., & Wood, K. L. (2015). Design principles: The foundation of design.
In ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and
Information in Engineering Conference (pp. V007T06A034-V007T06A034). American Society
of Mechanical Engineers.
Basson, S. H., Kanevsky, D., & Oblinger, D. A. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,165,280. Washington,
DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Low, S., Hui, T., & See, S. L. (2015). ENHANCING USER EXPERIENCE THROUGH USER
EXPERIENCE THROUGH CUSTOMISATION OF USER INTERFACE (UI) DESIGN.

Appendix
Figure 1 choose movie
No information of
date and time
No Search bar

Figure 2 wrong navigation