McInterface: 2nd Prototype Solving Heuristic Problems

McInterface
User Interface Design & Development Project
SIMS 213, Spring 2001

: Linda Harjono, Saifon Obromsook, John Yiu Chi Wai

Second-Interactive Prototype

Solving Heuristic Problems

We revised the interface according to the recommendations from the heuristic evaluation.

The menu/order page used for 1 - 4.

1. Order details should be displayed at Order Summary Page. (Violation #21, Severity 4)
Items ordered not visible at all times. (Violation #10, Severity 3)
Payment options out of place on order summary page. (Violation #22, Severity 3)

We have solved these two problems by placing the "Order Summary" section on the right side of the menu page. We also include details of ordered items in the "Order Summary" section. Each time the user adds an item to his/her order, the name & quantity of the item and the total amount due will be shown instantly in the summary. The "Order Summary" also includes the size, drink that comes with the order, and small icons that indicates "No Tomato", "No Onion", and "No Pickle" special requests. The Checkout button then would bring the user to a page that display only the Total Amount Due, Eat-In/To-Go choice, and Method-of-Payment choice .

2. User cannot see more than 6 items in checkout. (Violation #48, Severity 4)

We have added "Next" and "Previous" buttons to the "Order Summary" section so that user can see all the ordered items.

3. All meal options not visible/method for selecting different menu screens unclear. (Violation #2, Severity 3)

To make menu selection more obvious, now we use yellow tabs to present different menu pages on red background.

4. No "one-click" shortcuts for common size combos. (Violation #52, Severity 3)

Modifications have been made so that when user clicks on the picture of an item, it goes directly to the "Order Summary" section with the default drink and size.

5. Eat In/To Go options reset if user returns to main menu. (Violation #50, Severity 3)

Changes have been made so that the options will not be reset.

6. No confirmation on 'Quit' buttons. (Violation #30, Severity 3)

We have already solved this problem by eliminating by adding a simple warning dialog box when users click the Quit button from any page.

7. Thank you page delay too short to read instructions. (Violation #38, Severity 3)

We have increased the delay time to 10 seconds.

8. Cancel button labeling on the payment pages are not clear. (Violation #36, Severity 3)

We have changed the name of the button to "Cancel Payment".

9. Special requests too few, not previewed. (Violation #29, Severity 2)
"Regular" button on special request menu to remove request unclear. (Violation #31, Severity 2)
Text box in special request field may confuse. (Violation #40, Severity 3)

We have removed:

the "Special Requests" dialog box

the Special Requests text box in the Order Details Page

the option to ask for "Less Ice", "Less Pickle", "Less Tomato", and "Less Onion" because we consider these as edge cases. So far, in any of our testing, none chose any of these options.

Instead, we placed all the remaining Special Requests options on the Order Detail page. We also replaced the text box the allows users to specify the number of packets of ketchup they want with a check box to indicate a "More Ketchup?" option, because it is simpler and users usually ask for "More ketchup, please?" instead of specifying exactly the number of packets of ketchup they want.

10. Price info should appear with picture as well as name of beverage. (Violation #17, Severity 2)
Drink/fry sizes are not shown visually. (Violation #61, Severity 3)

We have added pictures of the different kinds of beverages in the Beverage menu page. Also, we have added drink choices and/or size information on the menu display for applicable food categories, such as Extra Value Meals, French fries, and beverages. Since our system is designed mainly for frequent customers of McDonald's, we don't think it is a high priority task to show the drink and French fries sizes visually in our design as users should be familiar with the sizes.

We also made some minor changes corresponding to some heuristic problems with lower severity levels.

1. We changed the "Happy Meal Toy Preview" link to have the same style as other links and we also changed the name of the link to "Happy Meal Toys". We also eliminated the toy image next to the Happy Meal tab since we think that it should be enough from the Happy Meal Toys tab that Happy Meal is the food category that comes with toys.

2. In the cash payment page, we changed the sentence "You have" to "You have inserted an amount of".

3. In the Thank you page, the "Start Over" button is changed to "Done" button.

4. We changed the pictures of the Extra Value Meals to indicate that the meals come with French fries and drinks.

5. In the credit card and ATM payment screens, we changed the "Authorize" and "OK" buttons to "Authorize Payment" buttons.

We decide not to implement any changes in response to the following heuristic problems:

1. Amount that is too small for the purchase. (Violation #57, Severity 3)

We do not plan to have our prototype respond to physical errors in the payment activities. Since we could not simulate the real money insertion process, we were not able to correct the problem that user may not have inserted enough money to make the purchase.

2. Start Page does not give context for system. (Violation #1, Severity 3)

We think that it is quite obvious to the users that the system can be used to place orders, so we do not agree that the severity rating of this heuristic problem is 3. We will try to solve this problem in the next prototype. In addition, we also plan to add changing images of New Tastes Menu, new promotion deals, or new toys on the start page.