Module
Lecturer
CS4826: HCI - HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
Luigina Coilfi
Assignment 1: INSPECTION OF A SYSTEM BASED ON
USABILITY HEURISTICS
Students
Patricia Murphy 0757969
Ruán Flood
0748013
Tom O'Donnell 0702131
“To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what
users do, not only what they say. Self-reported claims are
unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.”
Jakob Nielsen
Introduction
For this project we were asked to identify a system and explore its interaction
qualities based on usability heuristics. This method is known as Heuristic
Evaluation. For this we will be using Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics.
All three group members currently use iTunes as their primary digital media player.
One member has been using iTunes for 2 years, another member using
approximately 1 year and the final member of the team has been using the
software for 4 months. This was a big factor in our decision to do our heuristic
evaluation on iTunes.
The system we choose to explore is the apple software package “iTunes – Version
8”.
Product Details and Features
iTunes is a free application for Mac and PC. It plays all a users digital music and
video. It can also sync content to an iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. It is also an
entertainment superstore that stays open 24/7. iTunes puts a users entire music
and video collection a mere click away, giving the user an all-access pass to
thousands of hours of digital entertainment. Users can browse, organize and play
digital media from your Mac or PC.
Workload
Upon choosing iTunes for this project, we held a discussion about the structure and
plan for the project. We then individually went away and noted our personal
Heuristic Evaluation of iTunes using Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics before
meeting as a group again and assembled our results together. From this we
analyzed and documented our findings.
Heuristic Evaluation
1. VISIBILITY OF SYSTEM STATUS
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate
feedback within reasonable time.
'Display area' – what a user is playing/selected. Pop-up menu. Connections – CD,
DVD, iPod
iTunes current status can easily be read. In its initial state the GUI is still with the
play button in the top left corner clearly visible. When selecting a tack to play, the
track becomes clearly highlighted. When the chosen track is played the play button
changes to become a pause button. A small speaker icon then appears beside the
track that is being played. The display bar at the top of the GUI changes to display
the name, artist album of the track. There is a status bar representing the timeline
of the track and how much has been played. The display bar also shows the time
elapsed and time remaining in the track. When burning CDs it clearly displays the
name of the CD being burnt, the amount of time remaining in the burn and the
speed the CD is being burnt at. Overall the visibility of the system status is always
clearly visible. It is easy to both read and change the status of the programme.
At the bottom of the interface it tells you how many songs there are in the window
you are currently in e.g. library, party playlist etc., How many hours & minutes there
are of music and how much memory it takes up.
At the bottom of the interface, the user can check how many albums, tracks, total
time and how much memory is currently used to store the media. This feature can
be clicked on to display added information. This is another feature which does not
have a tooltip and is not readily recognizable as an actual feature.
2. MATCH BETWEEN SYSTEM AND THE REAL WORLD
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the
user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear
in a natural and logical order.
iTunes is an easily understood programme. Playing and skipping through tracks
and albums can be easily done. The play/pause, next track and previous track
buttons use universal icons which are easily recognizable. These are icons which
can be found on nearly every music player. The volume slider, create playlist,
shuffle, repeat and show/hide artwork functions are also controlled using easily
recognizable icons. At the top of the GUI, the file, edit, controls, view, advanced
and help drop down menus are present as per all standard software programmes
and software. Most computer users understand the functions of the file, edit, view
and help menus as they are present in many computer programmes. The view,
search and library to the left hand side of the GUI use a combination of icons and
easily understood terminology. It is this combination of icons and terminology which
makes iTunes familiar and easy to use for the user.
3. USER CONTROL AND FREEDOM
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to
leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and
redo.
Although iTunes provide a great amount of user control and freedom, it has some
issues that need to be addressed. Although supporting the undo feature it does not
undo when you clear a song from your library. If you accidently clear a song from
your library it can be frustrating because you may have to search for the source file
and this can be time consuming. You may also lose the track permanently. I could
not find any use for the undo feature. Changing from an unwanted state is pretty
easy. Also the ‘undo’ feature does not perform if a user accidently re-orders a track
in a playlist to an incorrect position.
Changing from an unwanted state was quite easy and efficient. Tracks could easily
be changed or the music stopped with minimal hassle and knowledge.
Overall we found iTunes was very user friendly. Most user controls were easily
performed. Creating playlists, playing music and burning your own CDs was all
achieved with great ease and freedom.
4. CONSISTENCY AND STANDARDS
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same
thing. Follow platform conventions.
We found that when a user right clicks on a menu in a playlist or album they are
given(amongst many other options) the option to copy or delete track(s). However,
when the user goes to paste the selected track(s) into another playlist, the right
click menu does not offer a ‘paste’ option. The ‘paste’ option has to be enabled
through the ‘edit’ pull down menu. This obviously is not consistent with platform
conventions. What we have found as users of ITunes is that the application
encourages the ‘click’ and ‘drag’ option in these situations.
There are also some inconsistencies between buttons and the file menu, for
example when a user is in a playlist window the burn disc button is at the end of
the screen which enables you to burn a playlist onto a disc. However in the file
menu to perform the same action you need to click “burn playlist to disc”
5. ERROR PREVENTION
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring
in the first place
With iTunes the primary error faced by users is the accidental deletion of a
track/album/playlists that the user wants to keep. iTunes prevents this by giving the
user two chances to confirm or deny their actions. For example when a user tries to
delete a track, a message box pops up asking them whether they are sure they
want to remove the selected track or not. This prevents the user from accidentally
deleting a track. When the user confirms that they want to delete the track by
clicking the remove button a second message box pops up, asking whether the
user wants the track to put into trash or keep it in the iTunes music folder. This
further prevents a user from deleting a track forever.
Dialog Box 1
Dialog Box 2
Also, when adding a track to a playlist, if the selected track is already in the
destined playlist, iTunes will ask the user if they want to duplicate the track. This
prevents unnecessary memory usage.
Another method of error prevention that iTunes has is when a user is importing a
CD into iTunes there is a cancel 'x' button in the display bar which cancels the
importing straight away.
6. RECOGNITION RATHER THAN RECALL
Make objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from
one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily
retrievable whenever appropriate.
The iTunes GUI is primarily fitted with icons and symbols that are , as already
discussed, universally recognized symbols. iTunes also provides 'Tooltips' when a
user leaves their cursor hover over a button to get a brief description of its function:
However, not all buttons on the interface have 'Tooltips' which in turn forces the
user to experiment and activate these buttons to discover their function.
These 'Buttons' do not show “Tooltips”
When adding multiple tracks to a playlist there is an indicator which shows the
number of tracks being added and also shows whether the tracks have permission
to be moved to the playlist.
6 Tracks are be added to the playlist
Also some of these buttons/icons are not instantly recognizable as buttons with
functions due to their colour and size within the GUI. But due to the small amount
of buttons on the GUI – 17 in total at the start up interface – users of the system
should be aware of their functions after a few interactions with iTunes.
7. FLEXIBILITY AND EFFICIENCY OF USE
Accelerators - unseen by the novice user - may often speed up the interaction for the expert user
such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor
frequent actions.
In iTunes there is a multitude of keyboard shortcuts available to the user, these can
be accessed via the ‘Help’ pop down menu. Mastering the use of these shortcuts
would mean the difference between being a novice to an expert user. As with the
majority of universally recognized icons in iTunes, a lot of the keyboard shortcuts
are universal as well. For example: command – A = select all songs, command –
X/C/V = cut/copy/paste and spacebar = play/stop.
Another accelerator in iTunes can be used when the user is looking for a certain
artist/album. When in grid or list view the user can easily find an album/artist by
pressing the letter on the keyboard that is the first letter of the artist they are
looking for. The view will than skip forward/backward in the list of albums/artists
and will show the albums were the artists begin with that letter and all the albums
that follow in that list.
8. AESTHETIC AND MINIMALIST DESIGN
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of
information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their
relative visibility.
As with most Apple based products, the basic aesthetics and design of the iTunes
application interface is minimalist, for example using simple gray graphics and
fewer buttons for the primary playing controls.
Along with this, the interface can be minimized to the ‘iTunes mini player’. The mini
player is a scaled down version of the main interface that has the library hidden
and only contains the basic controls and a smaller display bar.
iTunes Mini Player
9. HELP USERS RECOGNIZE, DIAGNOSE, AND RECOVER FROM ERRORS
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem,
and constructively suggest a solution.
While evaluating the software for this project and our personal usage to date, all
three users of the team encountered no errors. We did however for research
purposes look into documented 'error reports' with the software. Our findings were
that error messages were expressed in code and that finding a solution was not
obvious. This is evident from many discussions witnessed on different Web Forums
like http://www.cnet.com and http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/iTunes-problem-startupt82291.html and also at the official Apple Support Webpage
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2615.
10. HELP AND DOCUMENTATION
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to
provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the
user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
The Help function within iTunes was found to be very useful and simple to use
without the unnecessary requirement to be online to activate. We found the tooltips
very helpful and the iTunes help menu easy to navigate and solved all of the
problems and queries we encountered.
Severity Table
After compiling our heuristic evaluation we decided to create a severity rating table.
We gave each heuristic a severity rating from 1 to 5. 1 means no changes were
needed and the design works consistent and well with no usability problems at all.
5 indicates major problems with the usability of the design which needs immediate
fix.
Heuristic
No.
Description
Observations
Severity
Rating
Suggestion
1
VISIBILITY OF SYSTEM STATUS
We were always aware of the
systems status
1
Be consistent
2
MATCH BETWEEN SYSTEM AND
THE REAL WORLD
Icons and terminology easily
understood
2
Have tooltips for all
functions
3
USER CONTROL AND FREEDOM
Undo commands does not work
3
Fix undo command
4
CONSISTENCY AND STANDARDS
Paste was not available when right
clicking
2
Make paste
available while right
clicking
5
ERROR PREVENTION
Almost no errors, good warnings
1
Be consistent
6
RECOGNITION RATHER THAN
RECALL
Tooltips very helpful but not present
for all functions
2
Have tooltips for all
functions
7
FLEXIBILITY AND EFFICIENCY OF
USE
Efficient and easy to use software
1
Be consistent
8
AESTHETIC AND MINIMALIST
DESIGN
Aesthetically pleasing design
1
Be consistent
9
HELP USERS RECOGNIZE,
DIAGNOSE, AND RECOVER FROM
ERRORS
No errors encountered
1
Be consistent
Very helpful for our problems
1
Be consistent
10
HELP AND DOCUMENTATION
Conclusion