Heuristic Evaluation I

Description | Findings | Links to Data

Description

General

After fleshing out in detail the five initial design concepts, we needed to work on finalizing the paper prototypes for user testing. This heuristic evaluation serves as a first pass to get rid of any glaring usability problems in the prototypes.

Findings

Excel+

• Showing static thumbnails of graph does not give as much feedback as an updating preview.
• It is not clear when a particular selection range on the excel sheet can be graphed.
• Text in the preview pane is hardly legible.

Mac

• Metric descriptions allow users to better understand the metric they are graphing.
• The 'Multiple' label for one of the tabs does not give good scent. It is inconsistent with the labels of the rest of the tabs.
• '+' and '-' buttons signify increase in quantity. Using them for adding a new line on a graph may not be intuitive.

Pivot

• It is unclear that some metric labels can be expanded.
• The selection of x-axis and y-axis variables is inconsistent.
• Good help instructions are provided for exporting graph.

Tabs

• There is no button to efficiently select all the years for comparison.
• Clickable regions are consistent in appearance and color.
• There is lack of system feedback as the units of measure are not displayed on the graph.

Tree

• The region to select years is labeled 'Legend'. This will not be intuitive to users.
• It is easy to flip between different chart types using the graph type radio buttons.
• The graph label and the label of the metric selected do not match.

Links to Data

Prototypes