Comet System Heuristic Analysis Report
By Shaopeng Zhang, Dayuan Zou, Shengyu Liu
Comet is a system to provide information about academic talks in Pittsburgh. It aims to collect and disseminate information about academic colloquia and lectures, and promote user community by providing group and sharing functions.
The major user tasks include searching talks, viewing details, sharing information with others.
We did a heuristic evaluation according to Nielson and Molich’s heuristics. We evaluated the system according to the user tasks and system goal, generally in these categories: overview, detail view, posting forms, and sharing options. The result is the design of the system can support all functionalities, but to different extent.
• Viewing is well supported.
• Posting is fairly supported.
• Sharing is undermined.
HE1 -- Good Feature / Shaopeng ZhangName
Red bold error message is provided.
Evidence
Heuristic: Good error message
When user misses some field to fill in, a read bold error message shows at the corresponding field.
.
Explanation
User may miss or input wrong information in some field. In these cases, a red bold error message shows up at the corresponding field, indicating the details of the error.
Benefit
User can easily see the error message and trace to the error field to make modification.
Trade-offs
For information sources with some detail missing (e.g. time to be announced). The user cannot submit the talk, or the user may input some dummy information, creating misunderstanding and confusion.
Relationships
HE15,
HE2 -- Good Feature / Shengyu Liu
Name
Tag cloud using different font sizes for tags.
Evidence
Heuristic: simple and natural dialogue
Using font size to indicate the tag’s popularity.
.
Explanation
Bigger font size of tag is more popular.
Benefit
With differences of font sizes, user can easily find out which tags are popular.
Trade-offs
In practice, tag cloud is rarely used, because the quantity of posts are not big to use it.
Relationships
Name
Fit for all kinds of resolution in different browsers.
Evidence
Heuristic: Prevent Errors
The Picture is print screen in the resolution of 1280*800 in Chrome.
Explanation
We have tried different kinds of browsers(IE, Opera, Chrome, Firefox) in all the commonly used resolutions of Comet, which it performs as good as in IE.
Benefit
Every person in different systems and using different browsers can use Comet in the same outlooks.
Trade-offs
This feature will not limited the performance of high resolution users who will see a lot of blank in the screen
Relationships
Name
Numbers of being bookmarked, emailed and viewed.
Evidence
Heuristic: Speak the user language
Display the numbers of being bookmarked, emailed and viewed with different background colors.
.
Explanation
Using exact white digit with green background to display the post’s number of being bookmarked; Using white digit with beige background to display the post’s number of being emailed; Using white digit with purple background to display the post’s number of being viewed.
Benefit
Users can easily find out the popularity of this post and the exact information.
Trade-offs
Relationships
HE10 HE11 HE23
Name
Bookmarked tag.
Evidence
Heuristic: Speak the user’s language, simple and natural language
When users bookmarked a post, a green “Bookmarked” tag will be added behind the title.
.
Explanation
When users bookmarked a post, a green “Bookmarked” tag will be added behind the title. Users can easily judge whether a post is bookmarked. And in the whole page, users can easily find which posts are bookmarked.
Benefit
This design is really nice to help users to find and recognize posts which are bookmarked by them.
Trade-offs
Relationships
HE8
HE6-- Good Feature / Shengyu Liu
Name
Day, week, month selector.
Evidence
Heuristic: provide feedback
“Day, Week, Month” selector
.
Explanation
Using day, week, month selector, users can easily find one day or one week or one month’s posts. The current time span selection is also displayed.
Benefit
This design is really nice to help users to find the total posts of a certain week or month.
Trade-offs
Relationships
HE18
HE7-- Good Feature / Shengyu Liu
Name
Provided clearly marked log off.
Evidence
Log off button is placed in all web pages.
Heuristic: Provided clearly marked exits
Explanation
Users can easily find the log off button with little effort, and the button is always there.
Benefit
Users can always be able to get out of the system without damage anything.
Trade-offs
There should be a pop-up confirmation dialog when the user wants to log off, otherwise the too-easy log-off may causes users make some errors in clicking.
Relationships
HE8 -- Problem / Shengyu Liu
Name
confused about “Recommended” tag.
Evidence
Heuristic: Speak the user’s language
System can provide some recommended posts with red “Recommended” tags.
Explanation
It is necessary to provide the explanation of recommended tag. Are they recommended by system or advisors?
Severity
Moderate. It may confuse users where these recommendations come from.
Possible Solution
When hovering on “Recommended” tag, popup a help dialogue to explain this tag.
Relationships
HE5
Name
Event attribute name are marked by bold.
Evidence
HE: simple and natural dialogue
The attributes of events are bolded.
Explanation
Bolded text is darker, which makes it stand out of regular text.
Benefit
Users can scan and locate the attributes they want very fast.
Trade-offs
Relationships
HE11 HE14
HE10-Problem / Dayuan Zou
Name
Background color and text color of Email counter are similar
Evidence
HE: simple and natural dialogue
The Email counter uses yellow as background color and white as text color.
Explanation
The contrast between yellow and white is small. This will take longer time for user to read.
Severity
moderate. Email counter is a minor function.
Possible Solution
Change the color combination
Relationships
HE4 H11 HE23
HE11-Problem / Dayuan Zou
Name
Speech giver and speech time are putted in the same line
Evidence
Speech time is place after speech giver at the same line indicated by “on”.
Explanation
The speech time is very likely to be overlooked by user.
Severity
Moderate. Speech time is very essential information for a speech. The user can find it if he/she reads carefully.
Possible Solution
Place speech time in a separate line.
Relationships
HE4 HE10 HE9 HE14
Name
Sponsor check box has confusing meaning
Evidence
HE: simple and natural dialogue
When a department check box is selected, the parent school is also selected.
Explanation
The school should be a parent class of departments. The check box of school will confuse user. User will see duplicated school name in the sponsor section of a speech.
Severity
Moderate, can lead to duplication of the sponsors.
Possible Solution
Make the system automatically uncheck the check box of school if a department is selected.
Relationships
HE16
HE13 -- Problems / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
“Other notes” section is placed at the bottom in the detail page
Evidence
Heuristic: Simple and natural dialogue
The “other notes” which contains tags, communities and bookmark information is located at the bottom of the detail page.
.
Explanation
The information of tags, communities, and bookmarks are user-generated content and is the decision bases for user to decide the relevance to his interest and whether to bookmark or share. It’s not logical order putting this section below the sharing controls. And user may neglect this information if they are reluctant to input sharing information. But if they see the tags are within their interest, or their friends have bookmarked it, they are likely to use the sharing function which is one of the system goals.
Severity
Middle. With wrong location of the section, the user may neglect community contextual information. Important system goal of promoting sharing function is undermined.
Solution
Take the section up and place it closely after the description of the talk, before sharing controls.
Relationships
HE14 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
Event attributes are arranged in the wrong order.
Evidence
Heuristic: Simple and natural dialogue
The attributes of a talk are arranged as “talker, time, sponsor, location, poster, tags, communities, bookmarks”
.
Explanation
If we put user’s goal first, the most essential information for a user is title, talker, time, and location. Sponsor would be less important for a user. If system goal comes second, the information would be tags, communities, and bookmarks. Poster would be a minor aspect. Putting posting time close enough to the front could also be confusing with the talk time.
Severity
Moderate. The user would go through all the information he needs, as long as he is interested.
Solution
Arrange attributes as “talker, location, sponsor, tags, communities, bookmarks, poster”
Relationships
HE9 HE11
HE15 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
Some labels of “post talk” form may lead to confusion.
Evidence
Heuristic: Speaking the user’s language
The labels of the “Post Talk” such as sponsors have no clear meaning to some users.
.
Explanation
Some labels on the form create confusion to the user and they may enter in accurate information. User may be not sure whether need to input title of the speaker, and may not understand “Sponsor”.
Severity
moderate. Other users may still understand the meaning of the post with minor errors.
Possible Solution
Change the terms of some labels. For example, change “Sponsor” to “Hosting Organization” and change “Speaker” to “Name of the Speaker”
Relationships
HE1 HE20
HE16 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
The siblings of sponsors expand extensively and connot shrink back.
Evidence
Heuristic: Simple and natural dialogue
The list of siblings of sponsors is very long and cannot shrink back.
.
Explanation
When usre click on “show siblings” button, a long list of siblings expands and takes up most of the screen. The other input field is pushed down. The list cannot shrink back. When user want to review his input before submitting it, he has to scroll a long way from the bottom to the top, and then to the bottom again and click the “post talk” button.
Severity
Medium. User cannot review his content in one view and his experience can be hurt to some degree.
Possible Solution
Make the list as a drop-down box.
Relationships
HE12
HE17 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
The style of the talks in recent and pupular sections are inconsistent.
Evidence
Be consistent
The style of the talks have much detail, whereas the ones in popular section only show title, speaker and time.
.
Explanation
On the home page user may want to see talks from different aspects. For popular talks they may also want to see some details at a glance. For example, the user may want to see how popupar these talks are, but such information is not provided either on homepage or in the detail page. Because of the different style, the user may even not realize the talks in both sections are of the same kind.
Severity
Medium. User fails to see the popularity of some talks and may have understanding difficulty.
Possible Solution
Display talks in the same style across the two sections. Preferrably display them in the detailed one. Revamp the page to include both sections at the main area of the page.
Relationships
HE18 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
The calendar view options don’t provide natural dialogue.
Evidence
Heuristic: Simple and natural dialogue
The date selector has three step options. The < and > buttons around them means picking dates according to the step option.
.
Explanation
There are three view options for calendar view. With any one selected, the < and > button performs view selection according to the scope (e.g. previous or next day/week/month). The buttons are arranged around the view options. This layout creates misunderstanding to the user as if the buttons are for selecting among the view options.
Severity
Severe. The user may not perform successful browsing task with the misunderstanding, and such misunderstanding is not easy to be eliminated because the system provides no explanation for the use of the button.
Possible Solution
Separate the < > buttons and the Day/Week/Month selection. Give semantic explanation to the < > buttons. Provide feedbacks to the user’s selection of dates.
Relationships
HE6
HE19 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
Sharing options are not obvious.
Evidence
Heuristic: Simple and natural dialogue
Sharing options are under “Feed” section as a small “+” icon. Only by hovering the mouse over it can the user see the options.
Explanation
Sharing a webpage via email and social web is essentially different from subscribing to the feed. The former is to let others know whereas the latter is to keep oneself a record. What’s more, a small icon is insufficient to let the user notice the options.
Severity
Moderate. User may feel inconvenient if they can’t find sharing options. But they might try to share it anyway if they mean to.
Possible Solution
Separate sharing options from the “Feed” section. Put most commonly used sharing options (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) directly on the page, and others within “more” section.
Relationships
HE20 -- Problem / Shaopeng Zhang
Name
Posting form does not indicate which input field is required.
Evidence
Heuristic: Preventing errors, consistency
For required input field, there is no note to indicate “required”.