Mapping China – Heuristic Evaluation

Evaluators:

Florance Gee

Ran Li

Nettie Ng

Overall Recommendations

The project design is overall well done and the group has done a nice job narrowing down the scope to target specific users. Even though the interface presents some UI design issues, the screenshots are able to map out the general concepts of the project. We understand that what is available now is still in infantile stage, therefore, our evaluation is based on the design concepts that you are trying to present here through the screenshots and first interactive prototype.

The biggest problems we found in the evaluation are “consistency” and “simple & natural dialog”. The following are the key problems we found and the general suggestions we have that might be useful for improving the interface.

1. Develop a template to be used for all site pages to ensure page layout consistency. This will avoid problems with logo, footer, and header inconsistencies throughout the system.

2. Provide better intranet navigation on the homepage and all site pages. Paulette’s initial design was able to do a close enough job in providing top and left navigation panels on its design to allow users to better navigate through the system.

3. Improve information presentation on the maps throughout the system. For example, aside from city names also provide provinces names, so when users click on the “special economic zones” button they know which provinces are which. Since the space on the map is limited, one way to achieve this could be displaying city or province names when users putting the mouse over certain parts on the map. To avoid the blots from covering the city names on the map, consider making the blot colors more transparent. Allow zoom-in zoom-out function if possible to maximize the amount and clearness of the information presented. It could be challenging because you also do not want the maps to look too busy with names and colors, and functions.

4. Be careful using radio buttons as users may want to have multiple selections for certain selection categories, i.e. users may want to see company clusters, employee density, and revenue concentrations on the map at the same time.

5. Provide description or explanation on icons and unclear terms. For example, the arrow icon on the upper right of many of the pages and the acronyms on relationship links of the partnership page. Brief mouse-over tips would suffice.