Topic 1: Usability and User Experience Analysis
Hello Readers,
Welcome to our first blog on Usability engineering!! J
For those readers who are unfamiliar with this term, first
try to answer the below question.
In your opinion what is a usable application?
- An Application that can be easily used by the end user
- An Application that can be easily designed by the UI engineer
- An Application that meets the requirements of the client
- You don’t really know J
Answer is An Application that can be easily used by the end user.
Yes, Usability engineering is simply a process for ensuring whether
the targeted end users of a system can carry out the intended tasks efficiently,
effectively and satisfactorily. Usability is essential factor to consider while
developing an application because a successful product has to work for its
users and its needs to work well. Adding to
it, Nowadays people don’t have time to click around while trying to accomplish
a certain tasks and usually an average user takes only 50 milliseconds to form
an opinion about an online product.
To begin with we have critically examined the usability of
four web applications based on the below interaction factors.
- · Effectiveness->Percentage of task completion
- · Efficiency->Time to complete a task
- · User satisfaction-> User rating of performing the task
- · Distraction-> Time taken from the primary task; degradation of performance in primary task; level of user frustration
- · Scalability-> Effectiveness of interactions with large numbers of entities or users
- · Collaborative interaction-> Number of conflicts; percentage of conflicts resolved by the application; user feelings about conflicts and how they are resolved; user ability to recover from conflicts
Application 1: AMAZON
Fig 1: Amazon Website Look
Being an American cloud computing and electronic commerce company,
Amazon is the biggest retailer under the internet-based domain. Amazon offers
separate retail websites for almost all countries. For some of the Amazon
products, free international shipping is also provided. Amazon surpassed
Wal-Mart in the year 2015 by the capitalization.
Effectiveness:
Amazon helps people to buy things from wide varieties of categories that
include books, electronics, clothing, accessories and etc from their homes
rather than visiting the shops. The patterns are found to be at the right
places with proper labelling and naming conventions with good taxonomy which
makes users to gain knowledge and perform their tasks without making mistakes.
Based on the research conducted earlier, Amazon site records 72% of task
completion rate.
Efficiency:
As mentioned earlier, good labelling, naming conventions, taxonomy and
the ontology techniques incorporated by this website drives people to carry out
their tasks in a better way. A steady increase in the stock price has been
recorded from 2007 till now. Products sold from this website ranges from 306 to
426 per second thereby having a productivity rate of 80%. A greater care is
taken to ensure cost efficiency and delivery aspects. Timely updates regarding
the shipment of the items if ordered are also communicated to the users via
notifications.
Following are the screenshots that guarantees Effectiveness and
Efficiency when purchasing children book from Amazon site takes place.
Fig 2: User browses and selects the option Children Books from the
available list.
Fig 3: User is exposed to wide range of book categories, book
formats, age group of children and so on in a detailed and ordered manner.
Fig 4: Depicts the selection of a particular book along with the
formats available, nominal price ranges for each of these formats, thereby
providing the user an option either to add to cart to continue the shopping or
by making payment towards the purchase.
Safety:
Amazon ensures that if any error is encountered by the user by his/her
mistake, he/she can easily be redirected to the previous step as several
recovery options are present in handy. Thus this helps users to explore the
website continuously.
For example, if the user keys in an invalid url for any of the products
that he/she wishes to purchase, then a custom error message is displayed back
which is understandable by all.
Fig 5: Appropriate and understandable error message with
suitable recovery option.
Utility:
Amazon serves the users with best possible utilities to carry out and
complete their task successfully. Each and every category present in the site
has its own set of functions and corresponding functionalities to satisfy the
users.
The following screenshot shows that the user wishes to buy a book from
the Amazon website. The functionalities incorporated in the site for purchasing
the book are
Fig
6: Functionalities such as Categories, Best featured children books, Book formats,
Shipping option, Book series, Available books, Language options, Customer
reviews, Connection options, Packaging options and etc are available.
Learnability:
As we all know
that Amazon incorporates good labelling and naming standards, it is easier for
the users to learn either about the new products in the market by browsing the
website or to correctly perform their task and improve the completion rate. The
system provides the option for the user to initially start with their task by
easy browsing followed by the step by step process involved in adding the items
to their cart and thereby leading to the selection of quantity, delivery
options and the payment procedures.
Memorability:
The way the website is designed and
tasks are carried out enhances the memorability feature for this site. Users
can browse and navigate throughout the website by the presence of breadcrumbs
and other navigation options available.
Fig
7: Core values incorporated for better Learnability and Memorability.
User
experience and Satisfaction:
Apart from ensuring all the usability
goals, Amazon also promotes user satisfaction and user experience goals by
means of establishing safe, enjoyable and fun filled browse cum task
performance activities throughout the website.
The following screenshot provides a
clear picture of the user experience goals. The user is given options to go
view the images of the items to purchase in a more detailed manner from all
possible directions, better scrolling options, and picture enlargement and so
on.
Fig
8: Easy navigation from left to right rather than scrolling up and down
options.
Fig
9: 360 Degree view templates available for the item selected.
Fig
10: Zoom in and Zoom out options available for the item selected.
On the whole, Amazon states
“We’re always
looking for ways to improve usability of the site for our customers, including
those with disabilities.” For screen readers, they specifically recommend their
mobile site with a cleaner presentation of the content.
Application 2: HIM CLOTHING WEBSITE
This site sales
wedding collection for its online customers but it didn’t served its purpose
effectively and when we critically analyzed the usability of this site we found
the below issues.
Effectiveness:
We entered this
site in a motive of shopping a wedding suit we found it cumbersome because the
products where not categorized hierarchically and labelling convention seems
confusing.
Efficiency:
Confusing scrolling and awful site navigation makes it
difficult to complete the intended task effectively. Also there are no proper
breadcrumbs implemented to help user navigate back to shopping from shopping
cart.
Scalability:
Application 3: MEDIA TEK WEBSITE
Media
Tek website promote the media Tek company who are the Leading Chip designers
and a market lead in cutting-edge systems on a chip for the devices such as
HDTV, DVD, wireless communications and Blu-ray. It created the world's foremost
octa-core smartphone based on LTE.
Effectiveness:
The
default function of the system is to portraits that company product and to
helps the customer and dealer to buy the products but it didn’t give the
detailed intuitive of the application goal. They left more space blank without
any idea. It doesn’t give any chance to learn to do users task. Hence chances
of error become so high. Lacks of categorization lead to more error in this
site. Even they don’t have home option to return or from any pages. Similarly percentage of task completion is
very low. In extends bread crimps are not properly specified.
Image
shows: Inappropriate label at inappropriate place
Efficiency:
Before analyzing about
efficiency of the website, we have to analysis the user learning scope to
perform a task .In this website, learning capacity is difficult. Hence the
efficiency of the website is low.
Image shows: Improper categorization
Memorablity:
After analyzing the
website, we found that the lack of memorabilty (i.e), they didn’t maintain any
account for the users. Hence this website fails in memorability option.
Application 4: EBAY
Fig 1: Ebay Website Look
Effectiveness:
Ebay helps people to buy things from wide varieties of categories that
include books, electronics, clothing, accessories and etc from their homes
rather than visiting the shops. The patterns are found to be at the right
places with proper labelling and naming conventions with good taxonomy which
makes users to gain knowledge and perform their tasks without making mistakes.
Based on the research conducted earlier, Ebay site records 72% of task
completion rate.
Efficiency:
As mentioned earlier, good labelling, naming conventions, taxonomy and
the ontology techniques incorporated by this website drives people to carry out
their tasks in a better way. A steady increase in the stock price has been
recorded from 2007 till now. Products sold from this website ranges from 306 to
426 per second thereby having a productivity rate of 80%. A greater care is
taken to ensure cost efficiency and delivery aspects. Timely updates regarding
the shipment of the items if ordered are also communicated to the users via
notifications.
Following are the screenshots that guarantees Effectiveness and
Efficiency when purchasing a children book from Ebay site takes place.
Fig 2: User browses and selects the option Children Books from the
available list.
Fig 3: Depicts the selection of a particular book along with the
formats available, nominal price ranges for each of these formats, thereby
providing the user an option either to add to cart to continue the shopping or
by making payment towards the purchase.
Safety:
Ebay ensures that if any error is encountered by the user by his/her
mistake, he/she can easily be redirected to the previous step as several
recovery options are present in handy. Thus this helps users to explore the
website continuously.
For example, if the user keys in an invalid url for any of the products
that he/she wishes to purchase, then a custom error message is displayed back
which is understandable by all.
Utility:
Ebay serves the users with best possible utilities to carry out and
complete their task successfully. Each and every category present in the site
has its own set of functions and corresponding functionalities to satisfy the
users.
The following screenshot shows that the user wishes to buy a book from
the Ebay website. The functionalities incorporated in the site for purchasing
the book are
Fig 4: Functionalities such as Categories, Best featured children books, Book formats,
Shipping option, Book series, Available books, Language options, Customer
reviews, Connection options, Packaging options and etc are available.
Learnability:
As we all know
that Ebay incorporates good labelling and naming standards, it is easier for
the users to learn either about the new products in the market by browsing the
website or to correctly perform their task and improve the completion rate. The
system provides the option for the user to initially start with their task by
easy browsing followed by the step by step process involved in adding the items
to their cart and thereby leading to the selection of quantity, delivery
options and the payment procedures.
Memorability:
The way the website is designed and
tasks are carried out enhances the memorability feature for this site. Users
can browse and navigate throughout the website by the presence of breadcrumbs
and other navigation options available.
User
experience and Satisfaction:
Apart from ensuring all the usability
goals, Ebay also promotes user satisfaction and user experience goals by means
of establishing safe, enjoyable and fun filled browse cum task performance
activities throughout the website.
The following screenshot provides a
clear picture of the user experience goals. The user is given options to go
view the images of the items to purchase in a more detailed manner from all
possible directions, better scrolling options, and picture enlargement and so
on.
Fig 5: 360 Degree view templates available for the item selected.
Fig 6: Zoom in and Zoom out options available for the item selected.
Thus
a broader picture on websites Amazon and Ebay satisfying all the usability
goals whereas HIM Clothing and Mediatek websites dis satisfying the
usability goals are presented above.
No comments:
Post a Comment