Evaluation of “SMOKING
CESSATION SYSTEM FOR OLDER ADULTS”
By Vicky Chan
(1)
Positive feature: The design is very simple with no unnecessary informative
Relevant usability heuristic: Minimalist design
Severity: Good
(2)
Problem: The main login screen does not tell me what this application is. What am I logging into?
Relevant usability heuristic: Visibility of system status
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Have a title for this application
(3)
Problem: The main login screen is so big but the buttons and letters are so small.
Relevant usability heuristic: Consistency
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Make the buttons and text fields bigger, make the whole screen smaller. Possibly eliminating the need to use the scrollbar if you can fit everything into one screen.
(4)
Problem: If the user has forgotten about his/her username/password, there is no way for the user to get them.
Relevant usability heuristic: Minimize user memory load
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Have a link to “Forgot username/password” then send the username/password to that person’s email.
(5)
Problem: The ‘Create Account’ screen has no system status stating that I’m in the “Create Account” state.
Relevant usability heuristic: Visibility of system status
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Add a title to every screen to reflect the system state.
(6)
Problem: There is no “Cancel” button in the “Create Account” screen.
Relevant usability heuristic: Clearly Marked Exit
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Add a “Cancel” button to allow someone to go back to the login screen.
(7)
Problem: The text fields in “Create Account” screen are too small. Longer username or passwords will scroll off the text field. Many people have long names or passwords. This would put unnecessary limitations on them.
Relevant usability heuristic: Match between system and real world.
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Make the text fields longer.
(8)
Problem: When entering initial information, there is no indication of how many more questions I will be asked or how many more screens of questions are left to complete.
Relevant usability heuristic: Visibility of system status
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Have a progress indicator such as a timeline.
(9)
Problem: The “Date of birth” drop down boxes have no indication which one is “Day” and which is “Month”. The user has to make the assumption that the first is month since that has only 12 numbers. Some countries have the format of Day followed by Month. This may confuse those users.
Relevant usability heuristic: Consistency
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Instead of defaulting to “1”, the drop down box can default to “Month”, then the user will have to pick one from the list. Instead of numbers in the Month field, it can be listed as “January”, “February”,….etc.
(10)
Problem: While entering the initial information, there is no way to go back to a previous screen. If I have typed in something wrong, there is no way to go back and undo that.
Relevant usability heuristic: Undo, redo
Severity: Catastrophic
Recommended solution: Add a “Back” button.
(11)
Problem: The question “How many weeks do you need to quit?” in vague. I do not get what this question is asking for.
Relevant usability heuristics: Speak the Users Language
Severity: Minor
(12)
Problem: User is forced to enter a value for month. If I want to enter exactly 3 years and 0 months. I am forced to enter 0 month.
Relevant usability heuristics: Flexibility and efficiency of use
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Default to 0 or have a number scroller to select numbers rather than having a textfield.
(13)
Problem: Clicking “No” to the weekly meeting does nothing.
Relevant usability heuristic: Leave unwanted state
Severity: Catastrophic
(14)
Problem: No “Logout” button anywhere.
Relevant usability heuristic: Clearly Marked Exit
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Add a “logout” button in every screen so that the user can exit whenever they choose to.
(15)
Problem: If I selected “No” to the question “Did you feel the urge to smoke?”, then the next question “ If yes, did you control it?”…etc should be grayed out.
Relevant usability heuristic: Consistency
Severity: Minor
Recommended solution: Gray out the irrelevant features.
(16)
Problem: For the question: “If No, how many times did you smoke?”, I was able to enter a letter, which is an invalid input.
Relevant usability heuristic: Prevent errors
Severity: Minor
(17)
Problem: “next week” is relative. It may be best to show a calendar with a definite date.
Relevant usability heuristic: Match between system and real world
Severity: Major
Recommended solution: Show a calendar rather than use relative dates.
(18)
Problem: Picking a time is not very intuitive. Took me sometime to figure out what that “AT” was for.
Relevant usability heuristic: Match between system and real world
Severity: Minor
(19)
Problem: “Help” does not have any documentation about this application.
Relevant usability heuristic: Help and Documentation
Severity: Minor
(20)
Positive feature: Good error messages for invalid inputs. The error messages are very informative and they let the users know exactly what the problem was.
Relevant usability heuristic: Good error messages
Severity: Good
(21)
Problem: Kind of confused about the flow of the different screens. Am I supposed to fill out the survey in the beginning then go directly to the weekly meeting? Do I login again for each weekly meeting?
Relevant usability heuristic: Visibility of system status
Severity: Major
(22)
Positive feature: Very friendly dialog
Relevant usability heuristic: Speak the users language
Severity: Good
