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M8: UI Evaluation
M8: UI Evaluation
A good idea before really getting into the GUI design and coding is to kind of put down your design philosophy and ideals on paper. As an example, our group tried to emphasize a minimalist approach by keeping visual elements on the screen to a minimum. Also we did not want long series of windows to pop up making navigation slow and confusing. Included after is an example of what a UI evaluation looks like.
Usability Report for Team Collaborations Supply Chain
Overall, the User Interface is good, but there are some design flaws that if fixed, will make the interface both more aesthetically pleasing as well as more intuitive for the user. One of the noticeable flaws is the lack of distinction between windows. The color scheme is uniform, but there are no obvious signs, aside from the title bar, to distinguish between windows. This can be especially confusing between the Supplier and Point of Sale windows, as they have the exact same buttons and layout. A possible fix would be to put a banner above the buttons and list declaring if it is a POS or Supplier window. Also, you could make them different shades of the same color in order to keep the uniformity, while making them distinguishable. Another flaw we found is that the setup of the windows does not allow the user to “see the whole picture.” When a person opens up a Supplier/POS window from the CCS window, it not only locks the CCS window, but it opens on top of the CCS window. This would not be problematic, but all windows suffer the same problem of opening up in the same spot. We recommend that you have POS related windows open on the left side of the screen, and the Supplier windows on the right side. Another recommendation is to allow a user to have multiple windows open and active at the same time. Currently, a user can only use one window at a time and not skip between editing a POS and adding a Supplier. Allowing users to use multiple windows will help users who wish to multitask or like to jump all over the place while using the program. These are some of the more major aesthetic design flaws that you may wish to address.
The windows in general are problematic as well. One of the major faults with the windows is that in order to exit out of the POS “Add POS,” the user has to exit out of two windows in order to return to the CCS. This problem persists through all windows and should be addressed simply by allowing a user to exit a window or end an action with just one click of either a “Close” button or the “X”. This leads to possibly the most major flaw throughout the system: exiting or canceling windows when adding an object, be it a POS, Supplier, or Item, will add a blank item with no name or values associated with it. The problem with adding blank items should be the number one problem you focus on fixing. Another problem that is present throughout the program is the large number of windows required to get a task done. Multiple windows are required to simply edit items within a POS inventory, sometimes up to 6 or more windows may be open at a time. An easy fix would be to put multiple fields into one window with text boxes to allow the user to input the data. If you chose to stick with the multiple windows, we suggest that you open the windows in different spots (as mentioned earlier) so multiple windows are not overlapping one another.
Specific windows also have some design problems that can be easily fixed. Both the POS and Supplier have “Buy Items” methods, which the Supplier does not need. Also, the window which contains the “Buy Item” button is confusing, as it contains a button to edit the POS’s inventory. A better implementation may be to put the “Buy Item” button within the POS’s inventory. Not only could you use the list box currently within the POS inventory, you would cut out a window. Another problematic button is on the CCS UI. Both the Supplier and POS have an ambiguous “Edit” button. A user is technically editing a POS or Supplier, but it may be better to name it “Launch POS” or “Launch Supplier,” as that implies that you can do more than just edit. The CCS UI could benefit from a drop box that allows the user to choose what type of report to view, instead of having individual buttons along the bottom. The report windows as well could also benefit from having lists or drop boxes containing the suppliers or items, instead of forcing the user to remember the Supplier and Item names they want to see a report for. The final suggestion is to possibly look into a “tabbed” CCS UI that easily allows a user to switch between a Supplier and POS tabs. We feel this will give the user a better sense of how all of the pieces “fit” together. This is simply a personal design suggestion, as we feel it has made our UI more coherent.
The design you implemented is fairly easy to use and easy on the eyes, but not without its problems. Luckily, these problems are generally not major and some of the problems we listed are aesthetic problems that you may disagree with us upon. As long as the major problems are fixed (namely the adding of blank objects) then the interface is perfectly acceptable. The smaller aesthetic and design flaws we listed are something to look into in order to enhance the user experience.
Good luck!
-TeamApathy
UI Evaluation – Response
Team BigSilence brought up a lot of good criticisms and design flaws about our user interface. One of the flaws that impacted many of our windows was the fact that our buttons were not descriptive enough. This could be a major problem for users if they can not understand what a button does, so fixing this would be of fairly high priority. The easiest way would be to change the button names to something better, but a problem can arise if the button name is too long. Another implementation would be to add hovering text that describes what the button does or a help section. Another problem along these lines is the fact that there is no response from certain buttons if nothing is selected. The user may be very confused as to why they are not getting a response from their actions. To remedy this issue, we would add a warning when a user clicks on a button that requires a selection in order to continue. The final issue with buttons was that our cancel button was adding in a “blank” item. This is a very severe issue that can be fixed through a few coding changes and will not require a rethinking of our design.
Team BigSilence also pointed out a flaw with our general design and layout. Our interface contained too much negative space, the coloring was dull, and the buttons were out of alignment. Although this may seem to be a small issue, in actuality, it can have a large impact on the usability of the program. The lack of colors may turn some users away from using the program, and both the amount of negative space and non-aligned buttons can easily distract the user’s attention. Luckily, this is an easy fix from a coding perspective, but may be difficult to perfect from a design perspective. By changing the color scheme between windows, we could give them a distinct feel, but we would keep a uniform layout to show that these windows are interconnected with one another. The alignment issue is an oversight on our part and is fixed simply by aligning all of the buttons properly.
There was also criticism from Team BigSilence on a few smaller issues that need to be addressed as well. Currently, our default values are 0, which doesn’t make sense when you are adding an item to the inventory, because the quantity should be greater than 0. To remedy this, we will instead initialize default values by 1 where necessary. Also, we had some formatting issues like a 0 appearing in between strings in some of our selection lists, as well as the $ sign following a number, not preceding it. We are planning on formatting the selection lists to better comply with what they should be displaying (such as name and unit number for a POS), and the $ sign should be affixed to the beginning. Both changes should improve our user interface design and make it easier for the user to see valuable information without having to enter into another window.
Overall, Team BigSilence made a lot of good criticisms of our user interface. We will take everything they have said into consideration and use their criticisms as a basis for improving our design.
This is the heuristic evaluation that we used to evaluate the other team's program.
The heuristic evaluation at first glance looks to be daunting, but is one of the
most valuable tools in giving informative feedback and advice.
UI_Evaluation.doc
Team Apathy.doc
Link to this Page
- Team Apathy2 last edited on 23 April 2009 at 10:43 pm by 128.61.127.211