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The Dream Team M8

M8 UI Evaluation!


Requirements

  1. (10 points) Clearly identify the team whose prototype you evaluated and provide a one-page description of your evaluation plan and the rationale behind the plan, i.e., why you chose to conduct that evaluation on this prototype.
  2. (30 points) Results of execution of usability plan, providing clearly documented printed evidence that you conducted the evaluation plan correctly. For instance, this includes the actual raw data sheets and evaluator notes in addition to the synthesized data. I need to verify you did the evaluation you claimed to do.
  3. (30 points) 3-page usability report highlighting the three top concerns arising from the usability evaluation. The report should identify clearly what each usability concern is and the evidence you have to support this problem being a real problem that should be corrected by the design team. One copy of this part of the report goes to Bob, and one copy should be given to the team you evaluated.

  1. 3-page response of the usability report submitted to your project team. Be careful not to get defensive in this report (resist refuting that the findings of the evaluation team are incorrect). Make a clear argument for how you would address each usability concern. Assess whether the object-oriented design you developed for your prototype made it any easier to address these usability concerns.

What worked


What did not work


What we could have done differently


Copy of Report 1

The Dream Team chose to use the Heuristic Evaluation technique to critique Team Later’s code. We decided that this would be best for evaluating the usability of Team Later’s user interface because it provides a more objective approach to UI evaluation and gives our group the opportunity to also learn new design techniques.
The heuristic evaluation allows our team to be more objective in our approach to the evaluation. By using the Heuristic Evaluation system checklist, we are given specific things to look for in Team Later’s UI design. We check yes to those things that are provided, no to those things that are missing from the group design, and N/A to those that don’t yet apply. This gave our team the ability to clearly know what we are looking for and be assured that we are judging the design accurately and without bias to differences in our design and theirs. The checklist was so specific that it actually “double checked” our team’s initial reaction to the design.
We also felt that the heuristic evaluation would also give our team insight into what we could improve upon in our own design. By looking at the checklist and using it to see Team Later’s design in a new and objective way, we began to see design ideas that we could implement ourselves. We noticed specific things that we could work on that, due to our inexperience with user interface design, we failed to think of before. By focusing on these things while evaluating the group’s design we began to notice how important the inclusion of certain design features was. Seeing these things absent from Team Later’s design allowed us to see how effective each new and previously unthought-of design feature was.
Our plan was to have each member of our team fill out a heuristic evaluation checklist. From there we would compare our individual results and find out what design features Team Later’s User Interface was missing the most. This was determined by focusing on which particular section or category in the checklist received the most “no” answers. We charted these particular sections and from there our team discussed and took notes on how these particular components of Team Later’s design could be improved.

We printed off the Heuristic checklist for each of our team members to fill out. Then we compared the features that each of us marked “no” for. These are the common design faults that were found amongst our team as a whole. The raw data is attached to see each person’s opinions of Team Later’s GUI design.

Upon evaluating Team Later’s User Interface design, our team, The Dream Team, found the design to be rather clear and effective overall. Many of the design features implemented by Team Later were very intuitive and helped the user when navigating through the system. But we found three components of the design that we felt could be improved upon to enhance the overall usability of the interface. We discovered these concerns while performing the heuristic evaluation. Three recommendations that we would like to make are improvement in the color, button layout, and standardized formatting of the design.
While evaluating the design, we found that there was a very noticeable absence of color in the overall design. All the components of the UI had both white backgrounds and fields or gray shaded backgrounds and white fields. We felt that an addition of colors could dramatically increase the usability of the design. By adding colors to the system you can use their presence for specific purposes within the system. The Central Coordination System design could use tasteful color and brightness to contrast between the components on the screen and the background. The team decided that you could use a soft light blue as a background which would bring out the list boxes and buttons. You could also use colors and the shading of colors to show the relative importance or usage of many of the different screen items. The POS design contains a box that is used to determine the sell policy of your store. Because this box is central to controlling which items you will sell and when you will sell them, perhaps you could use a high saturated color to attract attention to this area. Oftentimes the user may just proceed with selling items after seeing the sell item button and not realize that they can actually control this process. Just remember to make the color coding consistent throughout the system. There are several list boxes in use throughout your entire system. You could use a white background color to emphasize those list boxes that are currently in use while having those that are inactive shaded with gray. The point is to emphasize data that is currently in use or very important by using saturated colors and deemphasize data by using de-saturated colors. There are several things we recommend you avoid while using color in your design. Do not use more than four to six colors in your design and avoid extreme colors. There is a difference between saturated and extreme.
Our second concern was the usage of buttons throughout the design. The first thing the group noticed was that the Central Coordination system had the “create Supplier” and “create POS” button in the top right area of each their respective list boxes. These buttons should be more closely linked with “remove Supplier/POS” and “view Supplier/POS”. We recommend that you align them horizontally with “create” first, “view” second, and “remove” third. With this alignment the user can easily locate each button used in controlling the two major components of your system. By placing related buttons in the same area on the screen you can dramatically increase usability and efficiency in your design. Having the “view” button separate the “create” and “remove” button removes the risk of the user accidently removing an already existing POS instead of creating one. The “exit” button should also be in the same place on every window in your system. It is located in the bottom center of both the CCS and the Supplier window, but is placed in the bottom right of the POS. You want to avoid having the user search for the “exit” button. The team also noticed that the buttons within the Supplier window were placed in an illogical order. There seems to be no reasoning behind their placement. “view invoices” should not be placed in the same area or group as “create”, “edit”, and “remove”. You want button location to be intuitive for the user. Perhaps you could make the window larger in order to allow button placement to be more reasonable. The relative size of the buttons could also enhance usability within your design. Creating or removing an item is substantially more important than viewing its invoice. We recommend you make those buttons of relative importance slightly larger than the others. Once again, remember to be consistent with this design as well. “Create”, “Edit”, and “Remove” should be of equal size.
Our last concern with the design was that of standardized formatting. Having a standardized format can make the interaction with the system more pleasurable and convenient for the user. When using the Supplier Application, we found that there was no way of formatting the item name or number within the list box. This caused the list to look disorderly and was thereby hard to read. We recommend having the system automatically enter leading or trailing spaces to align digits and letters in their respective places. This allows the user to scan the list and find item with relative ease. This should also be done in every list box in your system. There should also be standardized usage of upper and lower case letters amongst the text across your entire system. In the CCS, the word remove in “remove Supplier” is lower case while the word View in “View Supplier” is uppercase. The “Exit” button is also inconsistent across the system. There should be a consistent style as far as case is concerned. This makes your system look cleaner and more professional. Remember that standardizing window size so that it is based on overall importance to the system is also important. The POS and the Supplier App are two different sizes but have the same importance. They both should be slightly smaller than the CCS to make the design more intuitive for the user.
The overall design of the system is effective, but there are improvements that could be made to dramatically enhance the usability of your design. Our recommendations within this paper have detailed what we feel you should change in order to make the UI more intuitive, convenient, and usable.

Copy of Report 2

Critique is one of the most important aspects of any design process. No matter how hard one tries, one is often blinded by his/her creative work and hence, an outsider’s response/reaction to the work becomes extremely valuable. When we received our design’s critique by Team Undecided we were fairly surprised to find suggestions that had never crossed our mind and we, as a team, have responded to these suggestions by incorporating them in our design wherever possible.
Right from the start of our team’s design process, we paid special attention to the graphical layout of our design. This seems like a redundant exercise but as a team we were highly aware of the fact that the layout of our design would be the user’s first interaction with the software and hence, had to be carefully structured to provide the maximum ease and comfort in usability. As a result, we were careful to place our buttons and list boxes in places that would warrant user’s attention and made sure that the design maintained an aesthetic value. It was good to see that our hard work was appreciated by Team Undecided, which noted in their review that the buttons “looked good enough for the user to understand”. Special mention was also given to the placement of our buttons – “ they are positioned in the proper place when users need them” – and our overall design structure.
Moving on from design evaluation, Team Undecided went on to comment on the functionality our design, which in hindsight has been of great help. Designers often forget that though they themselves are extremely aware of a product’s overall use and functionalities, the same is not true of the user who is using the product for the first time. This problem surfaced in the team’s first critique on our design’s functionality which went on to say that “the design would have been more comprehensive if it included the titles for each part, such as: Items on top of item list stores, Orders on top of order list in stores etc.” It never struck us that a person who is using our software for the first time has no knowledge of how we decided to give shape to our design. This lack of knowledge on the user’s part would disable him to understand the intricacies of our design, which we as designers, have come to think of as redundant. This critique by Team Undecided made us realize that we were wrongly led to believe that the user would be fully aware of our design and its apparent functionality and as a result we decided to group everything under its suitable functionality. We hope that this change in our design helps our design to better serve the needs of our unassuming user and helps him to make use of our software in an efficient and trouble-free manner.
Following their trend of giving useful critiques, Team Undecided further helped us by pointing out that we need to add a button in our design that would enable us to make changes to our store. We believe that this button should be placed in our CCS and should be able to edit a particular store’s information as and when required. This suggestion not only pointed a flaw in our design but it greatly enabled us to improve the efficiency of our software. We as a team quite agree to the fact that a store’s information is not a mark in the stone and could be changed due to unforeseen circumstances. Hence, it is only prudent to provide the user the functionality of changing a store’s information as per the user’s needs and requirements. This change in design was not particularly hard to implement, as it did not interfere with the overall structure of our design, which was again pointed out by Team Undecided.
Team Undecided’s next critique centered on the functionality of editing an order, which was seen by our team as another valid and highly useful suggestion. Team Undecided pointed out that there is often need of editing an order before it is sent for processing and we again agree with this suggestion. While designing the look and usability of our point of sale, we agreed on the finality of the order and did not seem to think of it as a variable. If one draws inspiration from real life circumstances, it can be argued that this is quite a flaw in our design. However, we decided to do some research on this topic and found out that most major supply chain stores do not have the edit order functionality once the order has been finalized. Hence, in order to change an order, the stores first cancel the incorrect order and then proceed to place a new order with the suitable edits. We also noticed that there is an evident lag between the time an order is placed and when it is sent for processing, a highly useful functionality that enables the user to cancel and re-place the order. This exercise seems highly redundant when one could easily place a “edit order” button in one’s design. We have been unable to come up with an answer to the seemingly redundant act of cancelling and re-placing the order and as a result, we have not immediately acted on this critique. However, it should be noted that we are giving it due attention and hope to come up with a suitable change in our design as soon as possible.
The next suggestion was the most obvious one and was already acted upon even before the critique was handed down to us. We knew that the edit selling policy button was an extraneous feature in our design and should be merged with the “Add Store” and “Edit Store” functionality of our design. We agree with Team Undecided’s suggestion that placing it as a separate button is definitely not a mark of a good design. Rest assured, we have been quick to react to this suggestion and the new and improved design would feature the edit selling policy as a part of “Add Store” functionality.
Our team is extremely grateful to Team Undecided for taking out the time to review and assess our design and its functionality. We were quite happy with their pointed suggestions and can safely say that their inputs not only contributed to a better design but also greatly improved the usability and functionalities of our software. We, as a team, have paid special attention to their every suggestion and hope that our latest design comes close to what they expect of us. Overall, we as a team, are dedicated towards providing a design that is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use and are doing everything in our capacity to achieve our desired goal.

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