Evaluation of “Family Book”
By Vicky Chan
(1)
Positive feature: The pictures in the icons helps users to recognize the individual features.
Relevant usability heuristic: Match between system and real world
Severity: Good
(2)
Positive feature: The system state is very clearly marked with the title on the top and also the grayed out icon at the bottom.
Relevant usability heuristics: Visibility of system status
Severity: Good
(3)
Problem: The main screen is a bit too cluttered. It does not give any useful information about the Recent messages and Upcoming events because they show only very limited information.
Relevant usability heuristics: Minimalist design
Severity: Minor
(4)
Positive feature: The book form for the Contacts is a nice metaphor
Relevant usability heuristic: Match between system and real world
Severity: Good
(5)
Problem: Requiring someone to flip thru all the pages to get to a person’s contact is not efficient.
Relevant usability heuristics: Shortcuts or flexibility and efficiency of use
Severity: minor
Recommended solution: Perhaps an index from A to Z to let users jump to the relevant page.
(6)
Problem: When trying to write a message and click on the ‘Click to write subject’ or ‘Click to write message’, I was brought to another screen before I can type something in.
Relevant usability heuristic: Consistency (common applications allow you to type in text in the box directly without being brought to another screen)
Severity: Major
(7)
Problem: I had a hard time figuring out how to address a message to someone. I did not know what that list of names is for. But later I realized that was the “To” list.
Relevant usability heuristics: Match between system and real world. When writing a letter, the first line is usually the “To” list. Having this list on the side does not match real world.
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Add a “To” indicator to signify that this is the “To” list on the top.
(8)
Problem: I had a hard time figuring out how to remove someone from the “Create Message” screen. I tried to select the name but it did not allow me. Instead, I have to click “Remove Someone”, be brought to another screen, before I can remove someone.
Relevant usability heuristic: Consistency. Common applications allow selecting from a list, then clicking on the corresponding button. In this case, it is the other way around.
Severity: Minor
(9)
Problem: Clicking on right arrow is not responding
Relevant usability heuristic: Error messages
Severity: minor
Recommended solution: Remove that arrow if it is not clickable.
(10)
Positive feature: If I accidentally clicked on ‘Send Message’ when I was intending to call someone, I can click on ‘Call someone’ again and have it go back to the same person without having to scroll thru the Contacts again.
Relevant usability heuristic: Shortcuts/flexibility and efficiency of use
Severity: Good
(11)
Problem: After clicking on ‘Make Phone Call’, the status of ‘Dialing’ is too small.
Relevant usability heuristics: Visibility of system status
Severity: Minor
(12)
Problem: In the ‘Make Phone Call’ screen, there is too much irrelevant info. The contacts on the right are not relevant to the current phone call.
Relevant usability heuristics: Minimalist design
Severity: Minor
(13)
Problem: When creating a message, the ‘Send’ button is not enabled until I have written something in both the subject and the message body. There is no info given to the user as to why the button is not enabled.
Relevant usability heuristics: Good error messages.
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Allow users to send without a subject or a message body. Or at least give an error message saying both are needed when the user clicks “Send”.
(14)
Problem: I replied to a message and clicked “Send Message”. Then I was brought back to the main menu without getting any feedback saying the message was sent. There is also no way to make sure that it was indeed sent to the right person.
Relevant usability heuristics: Feedback
Severity: Minor
(15)
Problem: It is unclear what the buttons like ‘Help me write a…’, ‘Invitation’, ‘Personal Greeting’, ‘Seasonal Greeting’ mean in the ‘Create Message’ screen. I think they add too much complexity to the otherwise very simple interface of writing a message. This may be too much feature cluttered into one interface.
Relevant usability heuristics: Less is more
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Move these extra features to other places.
(16)
Problem: It is very hard to sort thru the messages to find the one I want when the messages are laid out in different areas of the screen. If I want to look for a message from someone, I have to look at many different parts of the screen for each individual message.
Relevant usability heuristics: Simple and natural dialogue
Severity: Major
Recommended solution:
Lay out the messages similar to Outlook’s layout
(17)
Problem: The ‘Invitation’ popup screen is too small to see the words.
Relevant usability heuristics: Consistency. The rest of the interface is big while this one is unacceptably small.
Severity: catastrophic
Recommended solution: Make the popup screen bigger or just have it be another screen in the main window.
(18)
Problem: There is no OK or Cancel button in the “Invitation’ screen.
Relevant usability heuristics: Clearly Marked Exit
Severity: Catastrophic
(19)
Problem: In the calendar screen, the words for the month are too small and are located in an uncommon area. I was looking up on the top portion of the screen since that is where a calendar usually says the month.
Relevant usability heuristics: Consistency (Common calendars list the month on top)
Severity: Cosmetic
Recommended solution: List it up top. But that might confuse users about the current date and time since that is listed on top as well.
(20)
Problem: The current time is shown in military time. People are not usually used to seeing their time in this format.
Relevant usability heuristics: Match between system and real world
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Use AM and PM for time
(21)
Problem: There is no help or documentation.
Relevant usability heuristics: Help and Documentation explaining what this application does and what to do when the users do not know how to perform a task.
Severity: Major
(22)
Problem: In the keyboard screen, the key “abc” and “ABC” to toggle between capital letters and lower case is not intuitive.
Relevant usability heuristics: Match between system and real world (the common keyboards use ‘Caps lock’)
Severity: Cosmetic
(23)
Problem: In “Create Message”, if I have written a few paragraphs of the message before realizing that I need to check on my schedule, I cannot view my schedule unless I click on the ‘X’, which will delete the paragraphs that I have already written.
Relevant usability heuristics: User control, leave unwanted state, redo
Severity: Major
Problem: Trying to “Call Someone” but instead gave me the “Create Message” screen. You can see from the picture that the title is Call Someone but the body is Create Message.
Relevant usability heuristics: Consistency
Severity: Catastrophic
