Heuristic Evaluation: Assessing Usability for Improved Interaction & Acceptance - Essay Sample

Introduction

Heuristic evaluation is a usability analysis technique that assists designers in finding usability difficulties in a user interface. A team of evaluators is deployed to inspect a user interface and determine whether it complies with some known heuristics. Usability is an essential aspect of human computer interaction. When heuristics evaluation is done, the usability problems identified are categorized on a numeric scale according to their effect on user interaction and acceptance. Heuristic evaluation can be done before user testing to reduce the number and severity of design errors identified by users (Kurosu, 2017). This paper will discuss the use of progressive disclosure in regards to the NHS website and how to conduct an evaluation with users.

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Progressive disclosure is a method that sets rarely used features to a secondary screen making a website easier to navigate and learn. When progressive disclosure is applied in a website the user finds information that is easier to learn on the first page and as one traverses through the page's information is narrowed down to what the user is searching (Nielsen, and Molich, 1990). The first pages of a website provide a user with general information, but as a user navigates the pages, he/she is prompted to perform more complex tasks or actions. Thus, progressive disclosure does not overwhelm the user with information in the early stages of website exploration.

Heuristic Evaluation

I think the NHS website complies with the need to use progressive disclosure. This can be proved by analyzing the navigation steps that one takes when looking for information about how to eat healthy as a vegan and learning about vegan sources of essential vitamins and minerals. The NHS website has applied progressive disclosure because it has disclosed information about how to eat healthy as a vegan in a progressive way. For example, when one wants to access information about vegan living, he/she must make four clicks to obtain the required information. Also, there are links related to healthy living, but as the user clicks the navigation buttons, he/she gets prompted to more specific information about eating healthy as a vegan. Progressive disclosure has been applied effectively in the NHS website and helps a user to view the desired information at the needed time.

Evaluation With Users

Usability evaluation examines how well users can learn and use an application or a website. The significant aspects of usability are effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction. NHS website analyses learnability as a usability goal. When choosing users to participate in NHS website evaluation, I would consider the different ages of users. Age is a very critical consideration in user evaluation (Nielsen, and Molich, 1990). NHS website can be accessed by both young and old people (NHS, 2017). The young and old people have different tastes in terms of what they want to see on a website. Moreover, young and old people have different levels of understanding and interacting with a website. For instance, young people can generally learn and use a website faster when compared to old folks.

When a user first experiences a website, it takes some time to understand the interface, controls, and navigation system. I will use the time taken to use the website as a measure to determine the learnability of the NHS website. Time can be used to measure the learnability of an application or a website (Nielsen, and Molich, 1990). As the user interacts with the website, he/she gains some experience to navigate through the pages. Some users take a long time to perform tasks on a website while others take a shorter time to use a website. However, in some websites, users can either take longer or shorter time depending with the nature of the site. A user will take a short time to navigate through a website that is easy to learn. On the other hand, a user will spend a long time to perform some actions on a website that is hard to learn. I will access the learnability of the NHS website through observing the time that users takes to perform actions.

I will collect data about the time that users take to perform an activity on the website to determine the usability of NHS website. The time that a user takes to know the location of action buttons indicates whether a website is easy or hard to use (Kurosu, 2017).A hard website will manifest longer periods of collected time while an easier to use website will indicate less user time. As such, time that a user spends to perform an action is the data that I will gather to access the learnability and usability of the NHS website.

Conclusion

Heuristic evaluations assist application and web designers in recognizing usability problems in an interface. An effective interface should be easy to use. NHS website has used the progressive disclosure technique in its design. This is because the website is structured in such a way that the first pages provide general information about specific topics, but as the user navigates through the site, he/she gets more detailed information. I will use age to determine the learnability of the NHS website. This is because young people and old people have different learning rates. Learnability is measured by considering the time a user spends to do an action on a website. As such, I will use the time to determine the learnability of the NHS website. Time data will be collected to assess the learnability of the NHS website.

References

Kurosu, M. (2017). Human-Computer Interaction. User Interface Design, Development, and Multimodality: 19th International Conference, HCI International 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 9-14, 2017, Proceedings (Vol. 10271). New York: NY, Springer

NHS (2017) Health A to Z. Retrieved from: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions

Nielsen, J., & Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 249-256). ACM.