Human Computer Interaction - Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation of Pinterest.com

Emma Murphy 11114614 Colin Doherty 11115122 Rachel Ryan 11135581

Samantha Berry 10103988

Introduction This report presents a Heuristic Evaluation of the website Pinterest.com an image sharing website that usually deals with themes. When looking at this site, that everyone in the group loves to use, we have noticed some annoyances that we never really had a place to air those concerns before. So as regular users of the site, we were fairly used to their errors, and were able to replicate them to get definitive results. The report is organized as follows: section 2 presents the Heuristic Evaluation of Pinterest, section 3, Examples from the Literature we found on different papers showing different methods of evaluation, Section 4 our Report on the Heuristic Evaluation of Pinterest, 4.1 System Specs, 4.2 Results of the Evaluation, 5 Conclusions, References and our Appendix. On Heuristic Evaluation Heuristic Evaluation is a method of usability testing. Nielsen explains what a heuristic evaluation is as a “method for finding usability problems in a user interface design by having a small set of evaluators examine the interface.” (Nielsen 1992) It is a widely accepted method for finding potential problems in user interfaces (Baker et al 2001) though it also has it’s advantages and disadvantages. In Nielsen and Molich’s article (Nielsen and Molich, 1990) they note some of the advantages of heuristic evaluation, if the research is being carried out in a group then the reliability of the results is more secure. They also state that it is an inexpensive method to carry out, there doesn’t need to be a lot of planning in order to carry out a heuristic evaluation, it is a method of research which can be used in the very early stages of development, and it is easy to get people to part take in a heuristic evaluation. (Nielsen and Molich, 1990) In Jeffries and Desurvire’s paper they point out severe disadvantages. In contrast to Nielsen and Molich’s paper they make the point that heuristic evaluation can be very costly. (Jeffries and Desurvire, 1992) Their paper states that for heuristic evaluation needs 3.5 experts minimum to be effective which can be very costly. This type of evaluation also leads to many minor problems being found which take developers a lot of time to sort through.

The growing use of heuristic evaluation has also lead to many people using it as their only form of testing. This has meant that they have stopped using usability testing which, if used in conjunction with heuristic evaluation, will give a much more conclusive set of results. In the Baker, Greenberg and Gutwin paper, they identify many different problems associated with Heuristic Evaluation, such as the difficulty that comes with studying how people use the system when there’s more than one person using it at the same time, (Baker et al, 2001) in different ways and for different purposes, but still collaborating. Is it also an incredibly time consuming and costly practice, as sometimes evaluators can only study a certain amount of the group at a time when all are using it, then they need to go back and study the people they missed, but at that point, they may be using the program in a different way. (Baker et al, 2001) Examples of the Literature Heuristic Evaluation of User Interfaces by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich (1990).

This article gives an overview of the thought process and work which goes into

carrying out a heuristic evaluation. Nielsen and Molich present in their introduction the methods which are used, “formally, automatically, empirically, and heuristically”. (Nielsen and Molich 1990)

In this research paper, they choose to focus on the empirical methods of research. This is the first weakness of the paper, because Nielsen and Molich chose only the empirical methods for their research this automatically makes their results less reliable.

The authors are involved in four experiments in order to test this method. The first experiment involves students who were studying a user interface design course and who had also taken a lecture from the authors on heuristic evaluations and usability problems. In this test they had to, named Teledata, they did had to work with ten screen shots of a system and express any thoughts of problems they would encounter with its design and functionalities. The evaluators were not working with a proper working system throughout this experiment. The second test described in the paper is Mantel. This was a fake information system made available by an also fabricated company which went by the same name as this experiment. The test was carried out in the “Danish Computerworld” magazine and the evaluators were the readers. Unlike the first group, the readers had never attended a lecture of either of the authors on this subject. This strengthens the reliability of this test as Nielsen and Molich felt that this particular experiment was important as it gives the opinion of industry professionals and not just students. The third and fourth tests, Savings and Transport, were both based on voice recognition technology. Again the

evaluators were students in the same course as the first group, and had also attended the same lecture. Although the authors do try to get an unbiased evaluation from their experiments, they try to include both industry professionals in user interface design as well as the students of this subject. Nielsen and Molich, however, leave out members of the general public who have no experience in this area. This is a great error, a lot can be learned from including people with no previous knowledge of user interface design. This problem continues to affect the authors results of the system as they even question themselves the reliability of the results, “WiIl they in fact present problems to real users, and to what degree do they constitute the complete set of usability problems?”. (Nielsen and Molich 1990) Despite questioning their own results, Nielsen and Molich stated that they did not try to carry out experiments to cover this issue.

The authors then move on to talk about aggregated evaluations, a positive of this paper, which involved a group of researchers each analysing a system for usability problems and then making a collective, agreed list of the problems. I shared this idea with the group and we discussed it. We felt that this was a valuable approach that we would like to work with in this assignment if possible. The authors also go through the obvious advantages of a heuristic evaluation, it is affordable to carry out, people feel that it is simpler to take part in a heuristic evaluation rather than any other research experiment, and it can be used for research at the very beginning of the development process.

Another positive aspect of this paper is that it is unbiased towards heuristic evaluations, it gives both advantages and disadvantages of this method of research. The authors understand that it is difficult to carry out a heuristic evaluation and at no time do they try to deny this fact. Finding Usability Problems Through Heuristic Evaluation by Jakob Nielsen (1992).

This article focuses on the use of heuristic evaluation to find usability problems. A telephone banking system was evaluated by three groups of people; novices, usability specialists and double specialists. The novices had no prior usability expertise, the double specialists had expertise in usability and telephone systems, and the last group were regular usability specialists. The paper gives a good insight into how well each group performs by using tables and statistics. After the reader is giving the system, the problems found within the system are critically analysed. The problems are split into major and minor problems, with sixteen problems being found in total. Each of these problems is described in detail, with Nielsen stating the usability principle in brackets afterward i.e. (speak the

users’ language.) I found this effective as it allowed me to understand exactly what the problem was. We are then given the results of the heuristic evaluation, with each group in different columns so they could be analysed together. The results showed that the novices found the least amount of problems, while the double specialists found the most. Though we are given averages so we can see the discrepancies of this with the next graph which shows a curve of how well each group performed. Nielsen then compares the performance of the regular specialists to the double specialists and states that the “double specialists found more problems, not because they were necessarily better usability specialists in general, but because they had specific experience with usability issues for the kind of user interface that was being evaluated.” (Nielsen 1992) Nielsen provides statistics which compares how well the double specialists performed against the regular specialists on average to back up this point. The second table in the paper shows how the problems can be grouped, such as the severity of the problem, the heuristics and the location in the dialogue, though the table only shows the problems that were found during the analysis. This table showed similar results to the article Emma read [Nielsen and Molich, 1990 ] as it also shows data for a heuristic analysis on Mantel and Teledata, as well as the telephone banking system. The rest of the article is spent explaining all of the tables through various headings Nielsen says that previous research has shown that heuristic evaluation finds more minor problems than other evaluation systems, though the definition of problem is rather loose. An error was major if it delayed the user, or caused the system to behave improperly. The paper concludes that usability specialists were much better than those than without experience, and those with even more expertise; double specialists, performed even better. It talks of how heuristic evaluation helps to find usability problems but it slightly biased as it does not provide any other alternatives, however the article achieves what it sets out to do, explaining how heuristic evaluation finds usability problems, which is a clear positive aspect of the paper. Usability testing vs, Heuristic Evaluation Was there a contest? By Robin Jeffries and Heather Desurvire This article aims to highlight the fact that heuristic evaluation, although effective, cannot be

used as the only form of testing for usability. Due to the growing popularity of heuristic evaluation many in the field have taken it to be a replacement for other forms of testing, with the main exclusion being usability testing. The goal for the authors of this paper is to show that the best form of testing is to use both heuristic evaluation and usability testing as this, in their opinion, gives the best results. The authors begin the paper by expressing their distress at the misinterpretation of the extent to which heuristic evaluation is effective. Although this method does find a vast amount of problems, many of these problems can be small and insignificant. Jeffries and Desurvire go on to speak about their interactions with colleagues who have ruled out usability testing altogether in favour of heuristic evaluation. They recount said interactions, giving examples such as Bruce Tognazzini saying that using experts for heuristic evaluation has put the “myth of usability testing to rest”. They go on to stress that this view, taken from their paper, is grossly misinformed. The use of heuristic evaluation by itself only serves to give inconclusive results. Usability testing has been proven to point out severe problems experienced by the user that heuristic evaluation failed to notice. From their research there was not a lot of crossover in the problems found in both types of evaluation, meaning that, when used together, there was greater knowledge gained of problems experienced. However the paper falls down in this respect as there are no specific studies or values given to back up these statements, only brief mentions of “previous studies”. The paper doesn’t go into much detail on any study and only gives vague references to back up statements. These studies appear to have been mentioned in the previous paper by Jeffries and Desurvire that this paper leads on from, but as for this article there is a lack of solid data to go by. There is evidence given that heuristic evaluation adds greatly to costs as there are so many problems identified that may not even need to be fixed and may just be “matters of taste”. (Jeffries and Desurvire, 1992) With so many problems to get through software developers may end up spending much more time and money than necessary and the heuristic evaluation may have been more of a hindrance than help. This method also requires expert “evaluators who have been trained in usability issues”. Heuristic evaluation was also much less effective with only one evaluator, with “3.5 evaluators at a minimum” needed, making the process quite expensive. Jeffries and Desurvire go on to address the misconception that “one should select a single method of usability evaluation”. (Jeffries and Desurvire, 1992) There seems to have been confusion, perhaps stemming from their previous paper, that heuristic evaluation can replace all other forms of testing. However they strongly advocate for varied

methods, which give much more conclusive results. They stress that their previous papers have shown that “different methods have various strengths” and that it is extremely ineffective to only use one method, as many problems discovered in usability testing don’t show up during a heuristic evaluation, and vice versa. This paper serves to broaden the minds of people conducting usability tests. From the paper it is clear that many have taken heuristic evaluation to be the best form of testing and, although the authors are in favour of the method, they discuss in depth the disadvantages of the method so as to give a more detailed view of the process and its downfalls, making people aware that it cannot be used as a replacement for all other methods. Although the paper has weak points, especially its lack of data and facts, it is clear that there has been more extensive research in past papers and that this paper is focusing on writing any misconceptions taken from said papers. Heuristic Evaluation of Groupware Based on the Mechanics of Collaboration Kevin Baker, Saul Greenberg and Carl Gutwin This article focuses on the development of Heuristic Evaluation (HE) for groupware or collaborative software. From the get go the article tells us that there are many problems with this software as it’s not usually widely used despite their availability. It is also quite difficult to evaluate. It has adapted Nielsen’s heuristic evaluation methodology. However HE is usually developed for single user apps. Without specific evaluation methods groupware developers cannot learn from experience. Groupware that is both costeffective and timely has not yet been developed, thus it is not a favourite practice. Evaluators choose and mix appropriate techniques to fit the situation. User Observation: The Evaluators observe a person using a system to perform tasks. This method tends to be long and can be too sterile it does not account for social, organisational, political and motivational factors that are influences. Field Studies: The evaluators study people. These provide the context that’s missing from observational techniques, but are complicated and costly in terms of how much time it takes. The evaluators need experience and a lot of time for the evaluation. There also needs to be a high number of people to be evaluated. Inspection Methods: Evaluators inspect usability bugs according to criteria related to how a task is seen and performed. Heuristic evaluation involves a small set of usability experts. It is popular in both research and industry and can be done in a short amount of time. HE is being developed to evaluate groupware. The process started in Greenberg. Tailored for evaluating comprehensive collaborative environments and how they coexist.

The belief is that this study will provide framework for identifying the problems in both groupware prototypes and existing systems. This article looks through the advantages and disadvantages of various types of groupware, such as text, video, audio or pictures. It also identifies the people have their own way of communicating and that when a piece of software tries to mediate that communication in its own way, it can become frustrating and people could be unwilling to use it. The papers weaknesses were a lack of solid facts and studies. There were also long winded paragraphs that were sometimes difficult to decipher. Report on Heuristic Evaluation of Pinterest.com

Pinterest is “a tool for collecting and organizing things you love”. The site allows their users to “repin” or in other words reblog other user’s pins, they may also like pins as well as comment on them. The website allows users to upload their own pins either from their computer or another website. We chose this website as we all had used it in the past, and were well aware of it’s functions and design. As individuals we all have had experiences with this site, some good and bad, as a group we felt that although the website was one which usually worked perfectly there was some usability problems which needed to be addressed.

1.1 System Specifications Pins Images and videos posted to the sight are referred to as your “pins”. You can add pins from other people’s boards, other websites or upload your own. People who follow your boards can also repin your pins to their own boards and like your pins. When you hover the mouse over a pin the “pin it” and “like” buttons appear. Boards Your pins are organized into boards. These boards are like folders which you can title. You can follow specific boards or all of someone’s boards on their profile. Profile Pinterest, like many other forms of social networks, provides you with a personal “profile”. Your profile consists of an overview of your “boards”. It also shows how many followers you have and how many people you follow, as well as your amount of boards, pins and likes. Home Feed Your “Home Feed” is where you can see the activity from others who you follow on the site. Clicking on the pinterest button at the top of the page brings you to the home feed. Search bar

The search bar allows you to search for pins using key words or categories. There is also a dropdown menu of popular categories which you can choose from located next to the search bar. Following and Unfollowing Pinterest allows you to follow other peoples boards. You can follow either one specific board by clicking the follow button on that board, or you can follow all of someone’s boards by clicking follow on their profile. Once the follow button has been clicked it changes to an “unfollow” button. You can then unfollow boards in the same manner but by clicking the same button. “Pin it” bookmark button Pinterest allows you to download the “Pin it” button which appears on your bookmarks bar. When you see something that you would like to pin on another site you can press this button, select the image or video, and another window will open allowing you to choose which board to pin to and to name the pin and pin it directly from that site. 1.2 Results of the Evaluation [Summarise Findings] In order to find problems with Pinterest.com, we used Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design (Nielsen, 1995) as we found them quite simple to group and follow, and would be easier when creating graphs later. We also used our lecture notes on Heuristic Evaluation (Pinatti, 2013) as they were in the same section as the project brief, thus we had already had access to them without requiring to do further research. We found several problems, thank to these heuristic rules, which are explained in full detail below [Number of Problems Identified by each individual] While carrying out the Heuristic Evaluation, our group found several problems with the Pinterest.com website. Colin found ten, Emma found eight, Rachel found ? and Samantha found ?. However some of these problems were the same problem, or the same problem in a different setting. In total we had eighteen problems which varied on degrees of severity. Colin 10 Emma 8 Rachel Samantha 7 [Variation of Severity Ratings]

As a group we have all assigned different values for each problem in the appendices. While doing this we didn’t consults with any of the other members as we wanted the results to be completely unbiased and not influenced by any of the other members. As you can see from the variation in all the ratings some members rate certain features more important than others and this is due to personal preference and taste. [Graphs of which problems messed up each heuristic]

Major Problems Problem 1: Clicked on an image, to try find the source and discovered a page which showed multiple posts ‘Pinned from: thefancy.com.” When clicked “thefancy.com” it was found that it wasn’t a link, just text, thus not able to find the image source, even though it appeared to be a link, confusing to a user who understood that websites had a .com at the end of them. (Consistency, Speak Users Language)

Problem 2: On the other side of the screen when problem 1 occurred, a clickable button was discovered which said “thefancy.com,” It was clicked, hoping to find the image source, except it led to the homepage of “thefancy.com” instead of the image source that the user was looking for. It was also confusing to have multiple sightings of “thefancy.com” on the one page, thus confusing the user as to their meanings. (Consistency) Problem 3: Blocking was a major problem exposed . Blocking is the process of deleting another user, so they can no longer see interactions. After blocking somebody, and returning to the previous page, the blocking menu didn’t go away. Upon refreshing the page, and it still wouldn’t go away, it also stayed when clicking on to the Pinterest Homepage. In order to get rid of this, the tab had to be closed and another opened to continue using Pinterest without obstruction. (Error Prevention, Efficiency of Use) Problem 4: Unblocking was also a large problem as there was no list of users blocked. In order to unblock a user, one had to go to their profile, and click the unblock button. This was a problem, as a user had to remember the user’s name in order to type it into a search bar. This could be avoided by having a list of people a user has blocked. Upon remembering the user’s name, it was impossible to navigate to their profile due to a system error. (Error Prevention, Minimize the users memory load.) Problem 5: The following section on a users’ personal profile was too crowded, and didn’t respond to interactions. The following section showed a user who they were following, with the ability to unfollow users. Upon unfollowing many users the screen did not update. There are now many users visible both with “Follow” and “Unfollow” buttons. This made it annoying trying to find other users that one wanted to unfollow. Even when refreshed, the users unfollowed remained in the “following” section. (Error Prevention, Consistency) Problem 6: Adding a new pin also provided several problems. Though Colin found the biggest problem. When the popup dialogue to add a new pin appeared, selected a pdf, to share with people. When “Upload” was clicked a user was taken to the next screen to add more details and a caption to the upload. When pin was clicked, the user was given the following message. “You need to upload an image or provide the 'image_url' parameter.” This error appeared far too late, and was quite a confusing message. Before uploading it should have stated that a user could only upload images. (Error Prevention, Speak the user’s language) Problem 7: Emma also had problems trying to upload pins, as when she clicked the pin button it did not work. She had to press the button twice in order to get it to carry out the function that it was supposed to. (Error Prevention)

Problem 8: Invitation to group boards also caused problems, Emma received an invitation to join a group board, but when she clicked “Yes” an error occurred and she was not able to join that board. When another invitation was sent, the same error occured. (Error Prevention) Problem 9: The finding friends option through other social mediums also caused problems. When Colin joined pinterest, he connected his twitter account, but not his facebook account for privacy. When he tried to find his twitter friends, he was told to refresh the page, due to an error. He was not able to find friends until he refreshed for the third time. Emma and Rachel also had this problem except refreshing did not work for them, they had to wait a few minutes before trying again. (Error Prevention) Minor Problems Problem 10: In the recent activity section, Colin clicked on “Nick Matthews and 1 other followed your board Artisims”, and it led to Nick’s profile, while Colin was hoping that it would lead to the followers of the board or show who the other follower was. He then clicked in another area and it led to the “Artisims” board. This proves to be very confusing for the user. (Consistency) Problem 11: Unfollow button grayed out, which confused Colin as to whether the function had been carried out or not, until it changed to a red follow button 1 second later. Colin was using Pinterest.com on his laptop, and saw an option to updgrade to the newer version of Pinterest, upon clicking on it, it automatically upgraded. This got even more confusing as the unfollow button was harder to find and took longer to change. It no longer changed to a red follow button, but also a grayed out version of the previous follow button. This involves too much clicking to carry out the unfollow function in Pinterest.com. (Consistency) Problem 12: Clicked on a pin, Colin hovered over share button to get the options he wanted to see appear, he then changed his mind and then wanted to view his likes, the options remained until he changed screen. This can be annoying for the user if the options happened to block another function on the Pinterest.com screen. ( Error Prevention ) Problem 13: Recent activity, two members of our group found that they couldn’t scroll down to view older entries and that there was no link provided to view older entries. This was annoying for the user who didn’t use Pinterest that frequently and wanted to refresh their memory, or see their most popular pins. ( User control and freedom, Flexibility ) Problem 14: Upon clicking a link to a dashboard, Emma found when she pressed this link

all it served to do was reload the page that she was already on, instead of leading to the board of another user. ( Error Prevention ) Problem 15: When on a dashboard of another user the categories are not able at the top, Emma had to press the back button three times in order to get this feature back. This involves too many clicks for just this one purpose. ( Consistency ) Problem 16: When you press follow button on a page after you have repinned it’s post, the window closes. Emma wanted to view this profile after she had followed it and she had to open the window up again herself. This also involves too many clicks. ( Consistency, Minimalist Design) Problem 17: When trying to comment on a pin, Emma had to click the button several times to get it to carry out its function. As it happened a few times, Emma just resorted to not commenting on pins as she found the fact that the button didn’t work to be very irritating. ( Error Prevention ) Problem 18: Clicked “X” on window, which asked whether the user wanted to download a mobile application version of Pinterest, and it reappeared. When Colin clicked “X” the first time and this did nothing, it was only after he had pressed the button several times that it actually carried out it’s function. It later came back, and Colin had to click it again. (Error Prevention, Consistency) Conclusions Through this assignment, as a group, we found that carrying out a heuristic evaluation can be quite difficult and challenging even despite it’s various advantages. Nevertheless Heuristic evaluations are helpful when designing or developing a new website or software, as it forces and motivates the users or testers to be critical when using it. All the team had used Pinterest.com before this assignment and yet we had never noticed how many problems existed in this website. This shows that users will put up with problems in websites and software as we have almost come to accept that there will be some problems. The major problems that we encountered with Pinterest.com are ones which cannot be ignored and need to be fixed by the designers in order to make Pinterest as user friendly as possible. The minor problems associated with Pinterest.com are ones which the user can deal with but do interrupt the flow of the website and can be irritating to the user. As a group, we all agree that Pinterest need to adopt a more userfriendly design and flow to their website as it is quite possible that you may end up lost in it.

References Nielsen, J. (1992). Finding usability problems through heuristic evaluation. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '92), Penny Bauersfeld, John Bennett, and Gene Lynch (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 373380. Baker, K., Greenberg, S. and Gutwin, C. (2001). Heuristic Evaluation of Groupware Based on the Mechanics of Collaboration. In Proceedings of the 8th IFIP International Conference on Engineering for HumanComputer Interaction (EHCI '01), Murray Reed Little and Laurence Nigay (Eds.). SpringerVerlag, London, UK, UK, 123140. Nielsen, J. and Molich, R. (1990). “Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '90), Jane Carrasco Chew and John Whiteside (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 249256. Jeffries, R. and Desurvire, H. (1992). “Usability testing vs. heuristic evaluation: was there a contest?.” SIGCHI Bull. 24, 4 (October 1992), 3941. Nielsen, J. (1995). “10 Usability Heuristic for User Interface Design.” [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.nngroup.com/articles/tenusabilityheuristics/. [Accessed 01 April 13]. Pinatti, F. (2013) ‘Heuristic Evaluation’, CS4826: Human Computer Interaction. Feb 27, University Of Limerick, unpublished. Appendix I

Final Ranked List of Unified Problems

with Average Severity Ratings # Problem Location Violated

Heuristic Problem Description Average

Severity

1

Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Speak Users Language

Clicked an image, trying find the image source, discovered a page which showed multiple posts ‘Pinned from: thefancy.com.” When clicked “thefancy.com” it was found that it wasn’t a link, just text, thus not able to find the image source, even though it appeared to be a link.

http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nngroup.com%2Farticles%2Ften-usability-heuristics%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNED_Gfd0z8CrOD8ECo6QfjNC1OSvw

2


Consistency

On the other side of the screen when problem 1 occurred, a clickable button was discovered which said “thefancy.com,” It was clicked, hoping to find the image source, except it led to the homepage of “thefancy.com” instead of the image source that the user was looking for. It was also confusing to have multiple sightings of “thefancy.com” on the one page, thus confusing the user as to their meanings.

3 Other Users Profile and Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Efficiency of Use

Blocking another was a major problem exposed. After blocking somebody, and returning to the previous page, the blocking menu didn’t go away. Upon refreshing the page, and it still wouldn’t go away, it also stayed when clicking on to the Pinterest Homepage. In order to get rid of this, the tab had to be closed and another opened to continue using Pinterest without obstruction.

4

Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Minimize the user’s memory

load

Unblocking was also a large problem as there was no list of users blocked. In order to unblock a user, one had to go to their profile, and click the unblock button. This was a problem, as a user had to remember the user’s name in order to type it into a search bar. This could be avoided by having a list of people a user has blocked. Upon remembering the user’s name, it was impossible to navigate to their profile due to a system error.

5

User’s Own Profile/ Following Section

Error Prevention

The following section on a users’ personal profile was too crowded, and didn’t respond to interactions. The following section showed a user who they were following, with the ability to unfollow users. Upon unfollowing many users the screen

Pinterest.com/user/followers

Consistency did not update. There are now manyusers visible both with “Follow” and “Unfollow” buttons. This made it annoying trying to find other users that one wanted to unfollow. Even when refreshed, the users unfollowed remained in the “following” section.

6

Pop up window on


Error Prevention

Speak the user’s

language

Adding a new pin also provided several problems. Though Colin found the biggest problem. When the popup dialogue to add a new pin appeared, selected a pdf, to share with people. When “Upload” was clicked a user was taken to the next screen to add more details and a caption to the upload. When pin was clicked, the user was given the following message. “You need to upload an image or provide the 'image_url' parameter.” This error appeared far too late, and was quite a confusing message. Before uploading it should have stated that a user could only upload images.

7

Pop up window on Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Emma also had problems trying to upload pins, as when she clicked the pin button it did not work. She had to press the button twice in order to get it to carry out the function that it was supposed to.

8


Error Prevention

Invitation to group boards also caused problems, Emma received an invitation to join a group board, but when she clicked “Yes” an error occurred and she was not able to join that board. When another invitation was sent, the same error occured.

9

Find Friends (Pinterest.com/find_f

Error Prevention

The finding friends option through other social mediums also caused problems. When Colin joined pinterest, he connected his twitter

riends/) account, but not his facebook account for privacy. When he tried to find his twitter friends, he was told to refresh the page, due to an error. He was not able to find friendsuntil he refreshed for the third time. Emma and Rachel also had this problem except refreshing did not work for them, they had to wait a few minutes before trying again.

10

Recent Activity window on Homepage

[Left Hand side] (Pinterest.com)

Consistency

In the recent activity section, Colin clicked on “Nick Matthews and 1 other followed your board Artisims”, and it led to Nick’s profile, while Colin was hoping that it would lead to the followers of the board or show who the other follower was. He then clicked in another area and it led to the “Artisims” board. This proves to be very confusing for the user.

11

Pop up Dialogue on Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Unfollow button grayed out, which confused Colin as to whether the function had been carried out or not,until it changed to a red follow button 1 second later. Colin was using Pinterest.com on his laptop, and saw an option to updgrade to the newer version of Pinterest, upon clicking on it, it automatically upgraded. This got even more confusing as the unfollow button was harder to find and took longer to change. It no longer changed to a red follow button, but also a grayed out version of the previous follow button. This involves too much clicking to carry out the unfollow function in Pinterest.com.

12

Homepage

Error Prevention

Clicked on a pin, Colin hovered overshare button to get the options he wanted to see appear, he then changed his mind and then wanted to view his likes, the options

(Pinterest.com) remained until he changed screen. This can be annoying for the user if the options happened to block another function on the Pinterest.com screen.

13



User Control and Freedom

Flexibility

Recent activity, two members of our group found that they couldn’t scroll down to view older entries and that there was no link provided to view older entries. This was annoying for the user who didn’t use Pinterest that frequently and wanted to refresh their memory, or see their most popular pins.

14


Error Prevention

Upon clicking a link to a dashboard, Emma found when she pressed this link all it served to do was reload the page that she was already on, instead of leading to the board of another user.

15

Other Users Profile (Pinterest.com/other

user) Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

When on a dashboard of another user the categories are not able at the top, Emma had to press the back button three times in order to get this feature back. This involves too many clicks for just this one purpose.

16

Popup window on Hompage

(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Minimalist Design

When you press follow button on a page after you have repinned it’s post, the window closes. Emma wanted to view this profile after she had followed it and she had to open the window up again herself. This also involves too many clicks.

17

Pop Up Dialogue on Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

When trying to comment on a pin, Emma had to click the button several times to get it to carry out its function. As it happened a few times, Emma just resorted to not commenting on pins as she found the fact that the button didn’t work tobe very irritating.

18


(Pinterest.com

Error Prevention

Consistency

Clicked “X” on window, which asked whether the user wanted to download a mobile application version of Pinterest, and it reappeared. When Colin clicked “X” the first time and this did nothing, it was only after he had pressed the button several times that it actually carried out it’s function. It later came back, and Colin had to click it again.

Appendix II

Initial Individual Report

Colin Doherty 11115122

# Problem Location

Violated Heuristic

Problem Description

1


(Pinterest.com

Error Prevention

Consistency

When I clicked “X” on window, which asked whether I wanted to download a mobile application version of Pinterest, it reappeared. When I clicked “X” the first timeand this did nothing, it was only after I had pressed the button several times that it actually carried out it’s function. It later came back, and I had to click it again to get rid of it.

2





In the recent activity section, I clicked on “Nick Matthews and 1 other followed your board Artisims”, and it led to Nick’s profile. I was hoping that it would lead to the followersof the board or show who the other follower was. When I clicked in another area and it led to the “Artisims” board. This proves to be very confusing for the user.

3


Pinterest.com/user

/followers

Error Prevention

Consistency

The following section my personal profile was too crowded, and didn’t respond to interactions. The following section showed me who the people I am following, with the ability to unfollow these users. Upon unfollowing many users the screen did not update. There were then many users visible both with “Follow” and “Unfollow” buttons.

This made it annoying trying to find other users that I wanted to unfollow. Even when refreshed, the users unfollowed remained in the “following” section.

4 Error Prevention When I joined pinterest, I connected my twitter account, but not my facebook account for privacy. When I tried to find his twitter friends, I was told to refresh the page, due to an error. I was not able to find friends until herefreshed for the third time.

5


Error Prevention

After clicking on a pin, I hovered over share button to get the options I wanted to see appear, I then changed my mind and then wanted to view my likes, the options remained until I changed screen. This was annoying because the options happened to block another function on the Pinterest.com screen.

6


Consistency


I clicked on an image, trying find the image source, discovered a page which showed multiple posts ‘Pinned from: thefancy.com.” When clicked “thefancy.com” it was found that it wasn’t a link, just text, thus not able to find the image source, even though it appeared to be a link.

7

Pop up window on


Error Prevention

Speak the user’s

language

I tried adding a new pin and found a major problem. When the popup dialogue to add a new pin appeared, I selected a pdf, to share with people. When I clicked upload I was taken to the next screen to add more details and a caption to the upload. When I clicked pin, I was given the following message. “You need to upload an image or provide the 'image_url' parameter.” This error appeared far too late, and was quite a confusing message as I did not understand what a parameter was. Before uploading it should have stated that I could only upload images.

8


[Left Hand side]


Flexibility

I found that I couldn’t scroll down to view older entries and that there was no link provided to view older entries in the recent activity section. I find this annoying as I

(Pinterest.com) wanted to see my most popular pins.

9

Other Users Profile and Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Prevent Errors

Efficiency of Use

Blocking another was a major problem exposed. After blocking somebody, and returning to the previous page, the blocking menu didn’t go away. Upon refreshing the page, and it still wouldn’t go away, it also stayed when clicking on to the Pinterest Homepage. In order to get rid of this, I had toclosed the tab and another opened to continue using Pinterest without obstruction.

10 Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention


load

Unblocking was also a large problem as there was no list of users blocked. In order tounblock a user, I had to go to their profile, and click the unblock button. This was a problem, as I had to remember the user’s name in order to type it into a search bar. This could be avoided by having a list of people a user has blocked. Upon remembering the user’s name, it was impossible to navigate to their profile due to asystem error.

Emma Murphy 11114614

# Problem Location

Violated Heuristic Problem Description

1

Home Page (Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Upon clicking a link to a dashboard, I found when she pressed this link all it served to do was reload the page that I was already on, instead of leading to the board of another user.

2

Home Page

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

I also had problems trying to upload pins, as when I clicked the pin button it did not work. I had to press the button twice in order to get it to carry out the function that itwas supposed to.

3

Other User’s Profile (Pinterest.com/other

Consistency

When on a dashboard of another user the categories are not able at the top, in order to get this feature

user) Home Page

(Pinterest.com)

back I had to press the back buttonthree times. This involves too many clicks for just this one purpose.

4

Pop up window on


Consistency

Minimalist Design

When I press the follow button on a page after I have repinned it’s post the window closes and if I want to view the dashboard I have to open it again myself. This also involves too many clicks.

5

Home Page

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

I received an invitation to join a group board for pins and when I clicked “yes” a pop up window appeared which told me that I was unable to accept the invitation due to an error.

6


Error Prevention

When trying to comment on a pin, Ihad to click the button several times to get it to carry out its function. As it happened a few times, I just resorted to not commenting on pins as I found the fact that the button didn’t work to be very irritating.

7


Error Prevention

Like Colin, I also had problems with the find friends option on Pinterest. But unlike Colin, refreshing the page did not make it work, I had to leave it for a few minutes and come back to it.

8

Recent activity

screen on left hand side of Home Page (Pinterest.com)

User Control and

Freedom

Flexibility

When looking through the recent activity screen I had problems trying to get back to look at older information.

Samantha Berry 10103988

# Problem Location Violated Heuristic Problem Description

1

Window on Homepage (Pinterest)

Error Prevention

Consistency

A window popped up in which it asked if I wanted to download a mobile version of the site and the window was only exited after repeated clicking of

the ‘x’

2

Recent Activity window (Pinterest)

Consistency When clicking on who follows a board if

more than one person is following it, it shows you the first followers page rather than who the other followers are.

3

Others Profiles

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention Consistency

No categories available.

4 Popup windows (Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Consistency

Windows close and need to be opened again and again

5


Error Prevention Tabs showing options to share a pin is a hover over and doesn’t go away after you remove your

mouse

6


Consistency


When attempting commenting, a butten needs to be presses several times over to carry out its function.

7


(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Speak the user’s language

Before uploading a file, it does not

specify what type of files are allowed on the page and alerts you far too late, after you’ve added names and tags etc. to the file that it is a wrong

or invalid file.

Appendix [N]

Unified Table of Problems Colin Doherty 11115122

# Problem Location

Violated Heuristic Problem Description Severity

1

Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Consistency



3

2


Consistency

On the other side of the screen when problem 1 occurred, a clickable button was discovered which said “thefancy.com,” It was clicked, hoping to find the image source, except it led to the homepage of “thefancy.com” instead of the image source that the user was looking for. It was also confusing to have multiple sightings of “thefancy.com” on the one page, thus confusing

2

the user as to their meanings.

3

Other Users Profile and Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Prevent Errors

Efficiency of Use

Blocking another was a major problem exposed. After blocking somebody, and returning to the previous page,the blocking menu didn’t go away. Upon refreshing the page, and it still wouldn’t go away, it also stayed when clicking on to the Pinterest Homepage. In order to get rid of this, the tab had to be closed and another opened to continue using Pinterest without obstruction.

2

4


Error Prevention

Minimize the user’s memory load

Unblocking was also a large problem as there was no list of users blocked. In order to unblock a user, one had to go to their profile, and click the unblock button. This was a problem, as a user had to remember the user’s name in order to type it into a search bar. This could be avoided by having a list of people a user has blocked. Upon remembering the user’s name, it was impossible to navigate to their profile due to a system error.

3

5

User’s Own Profile/

Following Section

Pinterest.com/user/followers

Error Prevention

Consistency

The following section on a users’ personal profile was too crowded, and didn’t respond to interactions. The following section showed a user who they were following, with the ability to unfollow users. Upon unfollowing many users the screen did not update. There are now many users visible both with “Follow” and “Unfollow” buttons. This made it

3

annoying trying to find other users that one wanted to unfollow. Even when refreshed, the users unfollowed remained in the “following” section.

6


(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention


Adding a new pin also provided several problems. Though Colin found the biggest problem. When the popup dialogue to add a new pin appeared, selected a pdf, to share with people. When “Upload” was clicked a user was taken to the next screen to add more details and a caption to the upload. When pin was clicked, the user was given the following message. “You need to upload an image or provide the 'image_url' parameter.” This error appeared far too late, and wasquite a confusing message. Before uploading it should have stated that a user could only upload images.

4

7


(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention


2

8


Error Prevention

Invitation to group boards also caused problems, Emma received an invitation to join a group board, but when she clicked “Yes” an error occurred and she was not able to join that board. When another invitation was sent, the same error occured.

3

9

Find Friends (Pinterest.com/fin

d_friends/)

Error Prevention

The finding friends option through other social mediums also caused problems. When Colin joined pinterest, he connected his twitter account, but not his facebook account for privacy. When he tried to find his twitter friends, he was told to refresh the page, due to an error. He was not able to find friends until he refreshed for the third time. Emma and Rachel also had this problem except refreshing did not work for them, they had to wait a few minutes before trying again.

3

10



Consistency

In the recent activity section, Colin clicked on “Nick Matthews and 1 other followedyour board Artisims”, and it led to Nick’s profile, while Colin was hoping that it would lead to the followers of the board or show who the other follower was. He then clicked in another area and it led to the “Artisims” board. This proves to be very confusing for the user.

2

11

Pop up Dialogue on Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Unfollow button grayed out, which confused Colin as to whether the function had been carried out or not, until it changed to a red follow button 1 second later. Colin was using Pinterest.com on his laptop, and saw an option to updgrade to the newer versionof Pinterest, upon clicking on it, it automatically upgraded. This got even more confusing as the unfollow button was harder to find and took longer to change. It no longer

2

changed to a red follow button, but also a grayed out version of the previous follow button. This involves too much clicking to carry out the unfollow function in Pinterest.com.

12


Error Prevention

Clicked on a pin, Colin hovered over share button to get the options he wanted to see appear, he then changed his mind and then wanted to view his likes, the options remained until he changed screen. This can be annoying for the user if the options happened to block another function on the Pinterest.com screen.

2

13




Flexibility


1

14


Error Prevention


2

15

Other Users

Profile (Pinterest.com/oth

eruser) Homepage

Consistency

When on a dashboard of another user the categories are not able at the top, Emma had to press the back button three times in order to get this feature back. This involves too

1

(Pinterest.com) many clicks for just this one purpose.

16


(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Minimalist Design


1

17

Pop Up Dialogue on Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

When trying to comment on a pin, Emma had to click the button several times to get it to carry out its function. As it happened a few times, Emma just resorted to not commenting on pins as she found the fact that the button didn’t work to be very irritating.

1

18


(Pinterest.com

Error Prevention

Consistency


1

Unified Table of Problems Emma Murphy 11114614

# Problem Location Violated Problem Description Average

Heuristic Severity

1


Consistency



1

2


Consistency

On the other side of the screen when problem 1 occurred, a clickable button was discovered which said “thefancy.com,” It was clicked, hoping to find the image source, except it led to the homepage of “thefancy.com” instead of the image source that the user was looking for. It was also confusing to have multiple sightings of “thefancy.com” on the one page, thus confusing the user as to their meanings.

2

3

Other Users Profile and Homepage (Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Efficiency of Use

Blocking another was a major problem exposed. After blocking somebody, and returning to the previous page, the blocking menu didn’t go away. Upon refreshing the page, and it still wouldn’t go away, it also stayed when clicking on to the Pinterest Homepage. In order to get rid of this, the tab had to be closed and another opened to continue using Pinterest without obstruction.

3

4

Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention


load

Unblocking was also a large problem as there was no list of users blocked. In order to unblock a user, one had to go to their profile, and click the unblock button. This was a problem, as a user had to remember the user’s name in order to type it into a search bar. This could be avoided by having a list of people a user has blocked. Upon

3

remembering the user’s name, it was impossible to navigate to their profile due to a system error.

5


Pinterest.com/user/f

ollowers

Error Prevention

Consistency

The following section on a users’ personal profile was too crowded, and didn’t respond to interactions. The following section showed a user who they were following, with the ability to unfollow users. Upon unfollowing many users the screen did not update. There are now manyusers visible both with “Follow” and “Unfollow” buttons. This made it annoying trying to find other users that one wanted to unfollow. Even when refreshed, the users unfollowed remained in the “following” section.

3

6

Pop up window on


Error Prevention


Adding a new pin also provided several problems. Though Colin found the biggest problem. When the popup dialogue to add a new pin appeared, selected a pdf, to share with people. When “Upload” was clicked a user was taken to the next screen to add more details and a caption to the upload. When pin was clicked, the user was given the following message. “You need to upload an image or provide the 'image_url' parameter.” This error appeared far too late, and was quite a confusing message. Before uploading it should have stated that a user could only upload images.

4

7


(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention


3

Invitation to group boards also caused problems, Emma received

8


Error Prevention

an invitation to join a group board, but when she clicked “Yes” an error occurred and she was not able to join that board. When another invitation was sent, the same error occured.

4

9

Find Friends (Pinterest.com/find_f

riends/)

Error Prevention

The finding friends option through other social mediums also caused problems. When Colin joined pinterest, he connected his twitter account, but not his facebook account for privacy. When he tried to find his twitter friends, he was told to refresh the page, due to an error. He was not able to find friendsuntil he refreshed for the third time. Emma and Rachel also had this problem except refreshing did not work for them, they had to wait a few minutes before trying again.

4

10



Consistency

In the recent activity section, Colin clicked on “Nick Matthews and 1 other followed your board Artisims”, and it led to Nick’s profile, while Colin was hoping that it would lead to the followers of the board or show who the other follower was. He then clicked in another area and it led to the “Artisims” board. This proves to be very confusing for the user.

2

11

Pop up Dialogue on Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Unfollow button grayed out, which confused Colin as to whether the function had been carried out or not,until it changed to a red follow button 1 second later. Colin was using Pinterest.com on his laptop, and saw an option to updgrade to the newer version of Pinterest, upon clicking on it, it automatically upgraded. This got even more confusing as the unfollow button was harder to find and took longer to change. It no longer changed to a

3

red follow button, but also a grayed out version of the previous follow button. This involves too much clicking to carry out the unfollow function in Pinterest.com.

12

Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

Clicked on a pin, Colin hovered overshare button to get the options he wanted to see appear, he then changed his mind and then wanted to view his likes, the options remained until he changed screen. This can be annoying for the user if the options happened to block another function on the Pinterest.com screen.

3

13




Flexibility


2

14


Error Prevention


2

15

Other Users Profile (Pinterest.com/other

user) Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

When on a dashboard of another user the categories are not able at the top, Emma had to press the back button three times in order to get this feature back. This involves too many clicks for just this one purpose.

3

16


(Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Minimalist Design


1

17

Pop Up Dialogue on Homepage

(Pinterest.com)

Error Prevention

When trying to comment on a pin, Emma had to click the button several times to get it to carry out its function. As it happened a few times, Emma just resorted to not commenting on pins as she found the fact that the button didn’t work tobe very irritating.

3

18


(Pinterest.com

Error Prevention

Consistency


3

#

Problem Location

Violated Heuristic

Problem Description

1

Find Friends (Pinterest.com/find_friends/)

Error Prevention When I started my pinterest I connected my facebook to make it easier to find frineds boards. However this proved difficult as I kept having to refresh the page.

2

Recent Activity window on Homepage [Left Hand side] (Pinterest.com)

User Control and Freedom Flexibility

It took too long to loadposts when scrolling down and the navigation through posts was not laid out well as there was no option to view old posts by date, meaning it took too long to find any old posts.

3

Recent Activity window on Homepage [Left Hand side] (Pinterest.com)

Consistency

Email notification recieved from pinterest of two new followers. When I clicked the email hoping to see who second follower was I was brought through to first followers profile, had to check followers list to see second

4

User’s Own Profile/ Following Section Pinterest.com/user/followers

Error Prevention Consistency

When unfollowing unwanted boards the follow button was slow to update meaning it was hard to tell who had already been unfollowed and time was wasted clicking the button to unfollow people twice

5


Error Prevention When trying to add a pin using the pin button the button was slow to respond and took several clicks to work.

6

Home Page

Error Prevention

When I invited a friend to be able to pin to one of my

(Pinterest.com)

boards they recieved an error message and were unable to pin to it

7


Consistency Speak Users Language

When looking for the source of an image I was brought to a blog of random photos and could not find the real source of the image.

Human Computer Interaction - Heuristic Evaluation

Design

Transcript of Human Computer Interaction - Heuristic Evaluation