Ran Li

IS213 Individual Assignment

3/11/04

Heuristic Evaluation

The web site, Rider Mel's Mountain Bike Guide to Moab, is trying to introduce and advertise the user a reference book about riding mountain bike in Moab. It allows the user to read the book samples and reviews. It also provides the book ordering information and related links. In order to draw the user’s interests, the site publishes Moab photos as well as video clips, and prize more involvement trough a contest.

Violations

[H1-1: Simple & natural dialog]

Reason	Severity	Recommendation
On the left panel, the site use large amounts of screen space to display the retailer’s logo. Since less is more, the CCNOW logo is not necessary at all to display on every page of the web site.	4	Remove the logo from the left navigation bar and put it inside the order page at most
The homepage looks noisy by using wildly contrasting, highly saturated colors.	3	Simplify the colors. Use at most three or four colors.

[H1-2: Speak the users’ language]

Reason	Severity	Recommendation
“Back To the Moab Information Site” link make no sense to user who enter the site directly. Why and where should I back?	3	Put the Moab Information Site into its cool link page or add a link on left panel named More Moab Information
Put “Home” at bottom, but “About” at the top in the left navigation bar is not a way the user get used to	3	Pop “Home” to the top, and put “About” to the bottom

[H1-4: Consistency]

Reason	Severity	Recommendation
The link “Photos” on left navigation bar become “Photos & Videos” in Home and Photos’ pages, but return back to “Photos” in all other pages.	3	Change “Photos” to “Photos & Videos” to keep consistence on left navigation bar
Use “Ordering” on left navigation bar, but use “Order” on the bottom of page navigation	3	Change “Ordering” to “Order” for all navigation links
In the photo page, the Photo labeled with new! Sometimes appease on the top of the photo, sometimes on the left of the photo.	2	Align “new!” label on top of all new photos.

[H1-5: Feedback]

Reason	Severity	Recommendation
In the video clips page, there is no clear clue that whether the links open an online watching clips or a download version and how big or long it is.	2	Clarify user should download the video, how big it is and how long it will take.

[H1-7: Shortcuts]

Reason	Severity	Recommendation
In the ordering page, there is no way to go to the authorized online retailer.	4	Provide a hyperlink to the CCNOW online ordering page for the book

[H1-9: Prevent errors]

Reason	Severity	Recommendation
In the homepage, once users click the online ordering link, they can never go back except reopen the site.	4	The link should open a new window to CCNOW site

Bicycle Gear-shift Redesign

Since the design of the gears (both front and end) have been decided, move them inward (in this case is towards left side) make the ride easy and move them towards right side make the ride hard. I decide to map the levels on the right handle to shift the gear to the easy riding way since the direction of pressing the levels is as same as the direction the gears will really move. Also, since silver level is in front of black level, I decide to map the silver level to control the front gear and black level to control the back gear. Also, the same reasoning way is applied to the design of the left handle.