John Benson

CSG170

Individual HW7

Evaluation of Rug Designer

Usability Heuristic	Usability Problem or Success	Severity
Simple and Natural Dialogue	(1) Layout of top page is excellent, with three distinct sections, which make sense and summarize the parameters for the desired rug well. The three sections are color choice, pattern choice, and size choice. (2) One issue I do have with the layout of the front page is that to choose a pattern, you have to go to the “Option” menu. It would make more sense to place a button called “Select Pattern” in the middle section of the front screen. (3) In the sub-screen where the user can select colors, there is a tab called “custom”, where you can select the 3 colors to use on the rug. You can choose a color using the “swatches” sub-screen. After selecting a color, the “preview” section at the bottom has lots of text and boxes. I think all that is really needed there is to simply show the color selected. (4) In the same “custom” sub-screen where you can select the colors, there is the “HSB” sub-screen, where you can fine-tune the color selection even further. This seems to be an unnecessarily too fine a detail, given that you already allow about 200 colors from the “swath” screen. (5) Similarly, in the same “custom” sub-screen where you can select the colors, there is the “RGB” sub-screen, where you can fine-tune the color selection even further. This also seems to be an unnecessarily too fine a detail, given that you already allow about 200 colors from the “swath” screen. (6) On the “choose pattern” sub-screen, I can’t distinguish between the different pattern types because the colors change on the different rugs. Would it make sense to use the same 3 colors on all patterns, so you can see how the patterns change?	(1) Good (2) Minor (3) Minor (4) Minor (5) Minor (6) Major
Speak the Users’ Language	(7) On the top page, for the circle rug, the user is asked to specify the radius for the circle rug. Radius may be a too mathematical a term, and not understood by some users. (8) For the “custom” sub-screen where the user can select the color to use, the user can select a color using the “swath” sub-screen. There is displayed about 200 or so boxes of varying shades of blues, greens, reds, etc. Would it be more natural to have a list with about 30 to 40 colors, with the names of the colors as well? This may make color selection more natural and similar to selection of colors from a clothes catalog, for example. (9) On the place order screen, the “submit” button should possibly say “submit order” to be similar to other e-commerce web sites. (10) On the place order screen, the “clear” button does not have much intuitive meaning as to what it will do. It does in fact clear the name and address fields…is this necessary? (11) The place order screen should probably be standardized to look like the ordering screen found on e-commerce web sites. For example, the address fields should have sub-components for city, state, and zip.	(7) Minor (8) Minor (9) Cosmetic (10) Cosmetic (11) Minor
Minimize User’s Memory Load
Consistency	(12) On the top page, for the circle rug, the user is asked to specify the radius for the circle rug. However, for the oval rug, the user is asked to specify the entire width and length. For consistency, I think the circle rug should also prompt the user to specify length. (13) In the “HSB” and “RGB” sub-screens, the “Accept” button is labeled “OK.”	(12) Minor (13) Cosmetic
Feedback	(14) There is good feedback when the user chooses colors from the sub-screen where colors are chosen. When the user presses the “accept” button on this sub-screen, the top-level screen appears, and the rug design on that screen has been updated to reflect the colors chosen (15) In the color selection sub-screen, the “Prev” and “Next” buttons work well to scroll through the available patterns, showing 4 patterns on the screen at a time. (16) In the sub-screen where the user can select a pattern, there is a tab called “color”, where you see all available patterns sorted by color. I clicked on the color panels on the left side of the screen, and I noticed that all the patterns updated. This did not make sense to me as I would have thought that the available patterns would be static here. (17) On the “choose pattern” sub-screen, I would want to see how my three colors I have chosen would look like for each of the pattern styles. (18) On the place order screen, I like that it updates to show me a picture and specifications of the exact rug I am ordering.	(14) Good (15) Good (16) Major (17) Major (18) Good
Clearly Marked Exits	(19) Exits are generally well-defined with the use of “Accept” and “Cancel” buttons on sub-screens.	(19) Good
Shortcuts
Good Error Messages
Prevent Errors	(20) On the top page, for the circle rug, the user is asked to specify the radius for the circle rug. It does not say what units are used, feet or inches or otherwise. (21) For rug length and width, and for segment length, the user is prompted to enter some number. There are no error messages for numbers that may be too large or that do not make sense. Should these be drop-down boxes instead?	(20) Major (21) Major
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