Milestone 7 - Heuristic Evaluation and Mini Formal Usability Study

1. Milestone 7 - Heuristic Evaluation and Mini Formal Usability Study Group 4

2. Visibility of system status • Desktop • Overall design is good, but the daily, weekly and monthly views do not have consistent looking pages . • Does not look affiliated to ISU: missing logos. • Mobile • Current date/ week is not displayed in the daily and weekly views. • Does not look affiliated to ISU: missing logos.

3. Match between system and real world • Desktop • The web links are meaningful and are logically ordered.The choice of words such as “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly” facilitate easy understanding as they are terms used in real world. • Mobile • The choice of words such as “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly” facilitate easy understanding as they are terms used in real world. • Buttons that appear upon selecting an event can cause confusion.

4. User control and freedom • Desktop • The users had the option to navigate freely from one view of the calendar to another. • Mobile • The user did not have the option to pick a day and go to the events for a particular day. • Also, search functionality was missing.

5. Consistencies and standards • Desktop • The Daily, Weekly and Monthly views were consistent as also “Search” which was consistently available on each page. • Mobile • Daily and Weekly events views showed consistent information.

6. Error prevention • Desktop • Users can miss regular web links if they are not placed strategically. Use of image links or buttons with bright color could clearly make certain items more prominent. • Mobile • “See Events by Categories” should be made more prominent so user does not miss this feature.

7. Recognition rather than recall • Desktop & Mobile • The words such as Daily, Weekly and Monthly used for calendar views were quite clear in its message. • Other links that imply previous and next on views and search indicated one meaning. • The user was not required to remember anything.

8. Flexibility and efficiency of use • Desktop • Flexibility and efficiency for experienced and novice users will remain the same because of the limited functions of the system. • Mobile • Mobile version of the calendar had the standard look and feel of an iPhone app, so experienced and even novice iPhone users would have no trouble in using this, therefore the system is flexible and efficient.

9. Aesthetic and minimalistic • Desktop • The application is aesthetically pleasing but has some improvement opportunities. • The design is minimalistic as it implements relevant functions of a calendar. • Mobile • The application is aesthetically pleasing but has some improvement opportunities. • The design of the mobile version is minimalistic because it only provides and implements most important features relevant to iPhone.

10. Help user recognize, diagnose and recover from errors • Desktop • Not applicable because the feature is not implemented. • Mobile • Not applicable because the feature is not implemented.

11. Help and documentation • Desktop • Not implemented. The terminology used for links are helpful enough as documentation. • Mobile • Not applicable. The terminology used for links are helpful enough as documentation.

12. What we learnt from the usability study • To KISS:A lot of functions that were designed initially such as “Announcements” and the filters were either removed or moved to a different section. This made the interface look much more simpler than what it was; helping users easily understand and navigate through the site. • You can’t go wrong with search:Once the position of the “Search” feature was changed, users noticed it relatively easily and used it right away instead of navigating through the web site! This indicates that users generally tend to search irrespective of the navigational features provided.

13. What we learnt from the usability study • Feel good-factor can help keep the user on the web site! • Upon selecting a weekly event, the selection was reflected on the mini calendar indicating the week. The users who used search functionality felt more confident to see that the event they found through the search was actually marked in the designed week section of the mini calendar. • Visibility of the next month/week was improved by changing from < and > buttons to the respective names of the week/month, placing them at top and bottom of the page. This greatly helped users as they no longer struggled to find the previous/ next month’s views.

14. Suggestions to improve • Desktop • ISU logo to be added so the website appears to be affiliated to ISU. • Eliminate/reduce consistencies issues with the page view for daily, weekly and monthly • Improve links’ view location on web pages. • Using image buttons will help make some important links more visible • Display filters for daily view, display event category along with the event name. • Mobile • ISU logo to be added so the mobile version appears to be affiliated to ISU. • Eliminate redundancy between the page titles and the button titles. • For more freedom and user control, include search functionality.