Heuristic Evaluation — DePaul University Website (Filter Courses)
By: Siddhi Naik
Tags: User Research, Heuristic Evaluation, User Experience Research

As a part of one of my graduate course work final project, I was supposed to perform Heuristic Evaluation on an application using Neilson’s 10 principles. I always used to think that performing Heuristic Evaluation must be a very easy task it wasn’t until I myself did it that I found how tedious the process could be. It is very important to study the application for minute details and find flaws within the system.

Photo by Giovanna on Unsplash

I have performed heuristic with the goal to filter courses by certain criteria on the University's website, with severity of the issues I thought the sight might have.

Here it goes…

1. Visibility of system status:

The system should always show the status of an on-going operation to the users until it is done. So, the user will get a clear understanding of the progress of that particular process/activity. Never create a situation where the user is completely confused over certain progress of the process/activity.

The Filter for college and Academic level takes time to get selected even after clicking on the select icon multiple times, it doesn’t get selected immediately if the selection is to be removed, again it takes time to do that, or even while reloading the page (depicted in figure 1 & 2). This can be quite frustrating for the user while filtering programs.

Fig 1. Filter takes time to get selected

Fig 2. Filter gets unselected after a while

Severity : 2

2. Match Between System and The Real World:

Is there something on your application that a user may not understand? This is very common to miss since we get associated with the product for over a period. It’s also important for the application to speak the language of the target user base.

The website does make use of terms like “undergraduate, graduate, programs, courses, academics” which the user can relate with to the real world and can be easily understood by any kind of user novice or a pro. (depicted in figure 3)

Figure 3: Terms used on the website

Severity: 0

3. User Control and Freedom:

This principle talks about giving the user the freedom to navigate and perform actions. The freedom to undo any accidental actions.

The website allows user to select multiple filters and apply them be it program selection or course selection. There are multiple criteria that the user can select depending on the course or program they wish to filter. (depicted in figure 4)

Figure 4. List of Courses with filters

Severity: 0

4. Consistency and Standards:

Consistency is the key. The way the interface is organized and how elements are presented is consistent across the site, irrespective of which device is being used to access it.

When selecting the academic catalog and going to academic programs there is a menu bar present at the top of the screen that helps in navigation. The same tab is also available throughout the website but if I go to the Filter courses page the tab isn’t available. After selecting the course tab, I remember having difficulty navigating back. Plus, this can be major issue for user while navigating. (Depicted in figures 5 and 6)

Fig 5. List of programs with navigation bar

Fig 6. No navigation bar is present at top

Severity: 3

5.Error Prevention:

Users are humans. Humans tend to do mistakes. So, we should always keep an eye to avoid those possible mistakes by giving appropriate suggestions and notifications when needed.

There isn’t any kind of major error that occurs since the process is to filter courses on different criteria. There isn’t any form that requires to fill any important data that may cause some issue. User just has to select criteria. There is a tab to enter keywords, but it is not important. (Depicted in figure 7)

Figure 7. Course Filters

Severity: 0

6. Recognition Rather Than Recall:

The application should minimize user’s memory load by making 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.

When going through the list of all programs (from academics tab) the user can search program in the search tab, when I tried entering a few words it prompted me the courses that would match. The only issue with this is that no past searches are saved. (Depicted in figure 8)

Figure 8. Search bar

Severity: 1

7. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use:

The interface should be flexible transforming itself between a novice user and an advanced user.

From the contextual enquiries that I have conducted in past and my personal experience from when I started using the application, the website for DePaul university and the course filtration process is easy to use for the new and old users alike. There is one issue I had was that there are two windows tabs for filtering programs one shows is available on the home page and other under academic catalog, one has list view and the other one shows tiles. It could really help users if there was only single page to search for programs. (Depicted in figure 9, 10)

Figure 9. Tile view of programs (from academic catalog)

Fig 10. List of programs (academics tab)

Severity: 1

8. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design:

Minimalist design is about making sure that everything presented to the user is necessary and useful. Important things can easily get lost if they are surrounded by clutter, so it is very important to keep things simple. Aesthetic considerations are where visual designs coming into play, but functions should always come ahead of form.

The system over all has a very well arranged and minimalistic design, the issue is just that some filters have a smaller font and certain tabs arranged are also smaller it would be great if the tabs and font would be large. Apart from these the site has a pretty decent design overall. (Depicted in figure 11)

Figure 11. Font of the filters for course

Severity: 1

9. Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, And Recover From Errors:

Sometimes errors are unavoidable. In those situations, you should design the system in such a way that users can easily see what happened and find a solution. Language is one key here. It is an opportunity to communicate with your user. Also, an opportunity to guide the user towards the solution, give tips for solving the error.

As I mentioned earlier, since the courses are being filtered by criteria that the user has to select from the dropdown menu and there aren’t any forms to be filled and hence there aren’t any errors or error messages displayed. Just one problem with the search bar that is present on the programs page. If user misspells any program name it just displays “your search didn’t match any results” and this can be frustrating to students. (Depicted in figure 12)

Figure 12. Search bar no result found

Severity: 1

10. Help and Documentation:

Ideally, all systems would run without the need for the help but that’s not realistic. When help and instructions are needed, they should be accessible, understandable and accurate.

The website has a request info tab on the academic program page that lets user request information on the course. There are links for contacting support as per requirements, different links for graduate, undergraduate information. All the information is given out in a very good manner. (Fig 13, 14)

Figure 13: Request Info

Figure 14: Categories to request info for

Severity: 2