Heuristic Evaluation of Product Features
My Role
User Experience / Product Designer
Deliverables
Miro summary: Findings and recommendations
Tools
Miro
Use case
In order to identify the main usability pain points that users were facing in three of the features related encompassed within the communication group of features within the LMS, I conducted a heuristic analysis to highlight key pain points and quick wins that can be done to improve product usability.
Communication features:
Announcements
Discussions.
Journals.
Challenges
Ensure that all aspects of the interface are fully evaluated.
Balance the thoroughness of the analysis with the time and resources available.
Provide clear, prioritized, and actionable recommendations.
Ensure that heuristic findings reflect real user problems through validation.
Usability Heuristics
For this test I followed the Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
Visibility of System Status
Match Between the System and the Real World
User Control and Freedom
Consistency and Standards
Error Prevention
Recognition Rather than Recall
Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
Help and Documentation
Heuristic Analysis Extract
A severity scale has been established to evaluate the urgency of the problem and determine the priority for resolving it from an SME (Subject Matter Expert) perspective.
In addition, I described what the problem was, which roles were affected by the problem, which part of the interface the problem was in, which heuristic principles were violated, the severity of the problem, and the SME recommendation to get it fixed.
Next steps
Finally, after conducting the evaluation, a list of recommendations was provided to stakeholders to help prioritize and understand how these requirements fit into the current development workload and planning.
It is worth noting that the heuristic evaluations allowed me to identify a potential problem with the wording used for each feature. The similarity in terminology might affect how users understand and expect each feature to behave, since each has similarities to others they are used to using the LMS in their regular activities.
Part of the recommendations provided included validating the common patterns of wording and concepts that users have in mind when interacting with each feature to avoid misleading actions or messages.
Takeaways
The heuristic evaluation not only allowed me to highlight key issues and quick wins to improve overall usability, but also revealed that similar terminology across features could confuse users, prompting recommendations to validate and clarify wording to improve user understanding and prevent misleading actions.