Spotify

Product Description 
Spotify is an online music subscription service that offers its users access to over 17 million songs. Not only can users listen to their songs via the Spotify application on their computers, but they can organise them into playlists, listen to the songs on their mobile devices, and share songs with other friends who are signed up with the music subscription service.

Target population
The service's target population is anyone who enjoys listening to music, are digitally-savvy, and who use the internet to access or purchase music.

Heuristics

Visibility of System Status
While high-speed internet is likely to be common amongst Spotify users, there are times when the internet gets capped, or it is just a slow day. This affects the streaming rate on Spotify, and causes the audio to get glitchy. When this happens, Spotify does not show any sign of buffering, nor does it pause the music; instead, the music just stops and starts, but if the user is unaware of the fact that it is the internet stalling the stream of music, it seems as if Spotify itself is freezing up. 

Match Between System and Real World
The system's layout is similar to any other music player, and is used in the same way. It uses the same language as social media websites and email, such as "follow", "trending", "starred" and "inbox". It also uses colloquialisms like "what's new" and "queue playlist" to help users find new music and to navigate the system. It sticks to language that the common user would be familiar with, so there is no need to consult a help guide to be able to use Spotify.

Another feature that does not seem to work is the shuffle and repeat buttons. These are commonly featured in other music playing applications to allow the user to automatically control what gets played and how many times. While the shuffle button works well enough, the repeat button does not seem to do anything. This is annoying because shuffle and repeat are standard control features in any music playing device, and to not be able to use one of them is frustrating.

Recognition Rather than Recall
Because the system's layout is similar to many other music players, it is fairly easy for a user who is familiar with iTunes or Window's Media Player to understand how to use Spotify with ease. The search bar is clearly labelled at the top of the screen, and double-clicking on a song will start playing it, so it's all very standard.

Flexibility and Freedom of Use
Spotify offers three tiers of access to their users: free, unlimited and premium. The free subscription just needs the user to sign up and download the Spotify application onto their computer, from which they will be able to access and listen to countless songs available in the cloud. Unlimited is $6.99 a month and allows the user to listen to songs on their computer and laptop ad-free. Finally, Premium allows the users to listen to songs on all their devices -- computer, laptop, phones and tablets -- ad-free. Premium also allows users to listen to music in offline mode for $11.99 per month.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
When typically in use, the Spotify application has a three-column layout, as shown above. The first column is for main window control, the main window features music and artist pages, and the third column alternates between a social stream and a place for ads. The ads alternate between the third column, and the bottom bar but it rarely interferes with using the application itself.

Conclusion 
Spotify is easy to use, and is incredibly intuitive, provided that the user has had experience with any other music player. The system is not great at indicating when there is an interruption in the streaming process, but the demographics that Spotify is aimed at would most likely already have regular access to internet with high enough speeds to stream audio.

NEO HR & Finance System

Product Description
NEO HR and Finance System is an online system designed to assist with HR and Finance administrative functions. This evaluation will focus specifically on the section of the system used to submit time sheets.

Target population
It is used by both HR administrators and payroll at UTS as part of their management duties, as well as by casual staff who need to submit their time sheets.

Heuristics

Match Between System and Real World
A major concern involving NEO's time sheet submission section is that there seems to be a mismatch between language used by the user and language that is in the system. In order to lodge a time sheet, one of the areas that need to be filled out is "position". It requires the user to search for and select a pre-determined position, as seen in the image below.

The system relies heavily on images to get the message across, so users would have to know that a magnifying glass means "Search". Users can simply type a position title into the text box, but once the user attempts to navigate to the next box, a search window will pop up and prompt the user to choose a pre-set job title.

Choosing from a pre-set job title makes sense within the system, but when the system comes up with no results, this can get problematic.

It also inexplicably makes the user sign in twice: once on the home page, and again once the user clicks on the "NEO" bookmark. There is no explanation as to why the sign-in must occur twice, but it is a waste of time - especially since the sign-ins occur one after the other, and there is no way to skip them.

User Control and Freedom
NEO does not offer much in the way of user control and freedom, particularly the payroll section. This is understandable, because it is a type of management system and the rigidity ensures that employees all get paid fairly. The issue of language is not a particularly pressing one, and can be easily accustomed to after using the system a few times.

Help Users Recognise, Diagnose and Recover
As mentioned above, there is an issue submitting time sheets, and the system does not provide any help points on the page at all. As discussed below, the documentation that is available does not provide much help in either recognising, diagnosing or recovering from the problem.
Help and Documentation
There is a FAQ section within the system, which can be located on the front login page of the NEO website.

As the screenshot shows, there are several options that offer help and support to confused users. "Logging into NEO for the first time", "User Guide", "Online Help", "NEO Support" and "FAQ" are the options that are presented to the user. While "logging into NEO for the first time" is a straightforward heading and will only be used by people who have never used the system before. However, the other options are more ambiguous in their audience targeting, and at first glance all seem like similar pages with different wording. 

"Online Help" and "NEO Support" both have blurbs underneath the heading to clarify their purpose, but "User Guide" and "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)" do not. It could be argued that those two headings are self-explanatory, but it does create an element of inconsistency on the page that may confuse users who are looking for a specific type of help. 

Additionally, unlike the rest of the links on the page, "User Guide" does not link to another webpage, but rather a direct download for a PowerPoint file. This poses a couple of issues: firstly, it does not indicate that clicking on the link prompt the user to download a file. Secondly, it assumes that all users are able to download and access the User Guide file, which may not be the case. This accessibility issue renders one portion of the help documentation useless to people who are unable to download and read PowerPoint files on their device.

The help documents on time sheet submission are all PDF files, which again poses another access barrier. In addition to this, the help files are at least four years old, and the system has changed since then, rendering the help documents useless.

Conclusion
The help section of the NEO system is particularly bad, which is a huge problem, because the system is not intuitive at all and offers little to no instruction. While the payroll section of the system is fairly self-explanatory, it does not seem to work and does not provide an explanation on what is going wrong and how to fix it.

Overall, NEO is a very frustrating system to use.

iPhone 5

source: Forbes

Product Description
The iPhone 5 is the latest smartphone released by Apple.

Target population
The iPhone 5 is targeted at users of Apple products and non-Apple users alike; basically anyone who is in the market for a smartphone.

Heuristics

Visibility of System Status
The visibility of status can differ from application to application, but when using a default phone feature such as the Settings or iTunes, the phone indicates that it is still processing through a little loading circle located on the top bar on the left, next to the reception indicator.

While it does not explicitly tell the user what is going on, it does let the user know that something is being loaded or the phone is still working in the background. If the loading circle is still in the top bar, it could explain why a program is not working properly, or if there are any elements of an application are missing.

Use of the loading circle is not necessarily uniform across all applications, particularly on third-party applications; but it is common practice for a similar loading circle to be used to indicate that a program or application is loading.

The iPhone also uses sounds, vibration and alert pop-ups to let users know about various changes in the phone's status. When the phone is plugged into a power source and charging, it will make a sharp, flute-like noise; if the phone is on silent, the phone will vibrate instead. This indicates that

Match Between System and Real World
The phone is controlled primarily though touch-screen, which modern smartphone users will already be familiar with. The general controls are standard amongst other touch-screen phones; unlocking the phone requires the user to slide their finger across the screen and/or enter a numerical password. 

Even a user with no previous experience using the iPhone would know how to navigate the lock screen: it clearly says "slide to unlock" with an arrow pointing in the direction it should slide in, and provided that the screen is not damaged, completing this action will unlock the phone. 

However, the phone's lock screen has another feature which is not as intuitive: the camera shortcut. Next to the unlock area, there's an image of a camera that could be construed as a button that must be clicked on. In reality, the icon must be slid upwards to go straight to the camera function, but this is not evident at first glance. 

Once the lock screen is out of the way, the menu screen is fairly simple to operate. Navigation between screens just requires a simple slide-swipe, and the number of pages that are available is indicated at the bottom of the icons, right above the dock. 

This feature has three main purposes: it tells users how many pages there are, what page they are currently on, and it indicates to first-time users that navigation of the menu goes sideways, rather than up and down. It is simple, but effective.

Flexibility and Freedom of Use
One of the defining features of Apple products is their sleek, minimalist design, which is uniform throughout all their products. The homescreens for the iPad, iPod and iPhone are all the same and cannot easily be changed or customised by the user. Icons for applications can be moved around from screen to screen, but they are always snapped into predefined columns. While there are third-party applications that can change how the phone looks, and adds extra customisation features, there is no way to do this through the system without jail-breaking it.

Recognition Rather than Recall
Though it is the fifth incarnation of Apple's smartphone and it has a slightly larger screen than its predecessors, the iPhone 5 has the same lock and homescreen, the same menu layout. 

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
One of the defining features of an Apple product is its attention to aesthetics and pride in minimalist design; the iPhone 5 is no exception. The phone is thinner and lighter than its predecessors, with a larger retina-display screen. 

Help and Documentation
Apple products are renowned for their emphasis on making sure the user gets the best experience out of their products. This is evident throughout the purchasing process: their stores are big, white, and full of light and glass, their products come in white, minimalistic boxes, and even unboxing a new Apple product becomes an anticipated event. In that vein, there is little documentation that comes inside the box for the iPhone 5, and what is available is stylised and does not contain any depth of information on how to use the product.

This could be because by now, the product is so ubiquitous and simple that it is assumed anyone can use it. The operation manuals for Apple products are available for download in PDF form on their website, but this assumes that their users have access to the internet and are able to download and read a 14MB PDF file.

Conclusion
While the iPhone 5 is sound in some respects, it does fail on a few heuristics -- specifically the Help and Documentation and Flexibility and Freedom of Use. Apple's minimalistic philosophy may play well from a marketing point of view, but as this evaluation has shown, it comes at a usability cost.

However, it is a very intuitive system, and its users are getting increasingly technologically savvy, so where it fails on help and documentation is becoming less and less of an issue.

Amazon (UK)

source: good e-reader

Product Description

Amazon is a multinational e-commerce company that sells anything from books to clothes to furniture. It is the largest online retailer in the world, and has separate retail websites for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to countries that do not have an Amazon component. This evaluation will focus on the UK website.

Target population
The website's target audience is people who enjoy shopping online, have a credit card or Paypal account, and are comfortable with disclosing personal information on the internet.

Match Between System and Real World
Originally, this evaluation was going to be done on the Australian branch of the Amazon website. However, it was soon revealed that the URL http://www.amazon.com.au redirects to Amazon's UK site instead (http://www.amazon.co.uk). This is confusing, because while Australia is part of the Commonwealth, it is not remotely geographically close to Australia. This is a huge concern, because Amazon is a shopping website, and that involves exchange of currency and shipping of items. The UK uses a different currency and is roughly 15,000kms away from Australia, so this is a major issue for Australian users who wanted to go to the Australian branch of Amazon -- which we know now does not exist.

What would have been helpful is if instead of automatically redirecting to the UK site automatically, Amazon could have issued a warning that the page was going to redirect, or leave some instructions on how to shop internationally on the UK website. Instead, the automatic redirect leaves users feeling slightly confused, and possibly unwilling to shop at Amazon in the future.

Consistency and Standards/Accessibility
One of the biggest issues facing the web today is accessibility of websites. While there is no way to police web standards for every website, there are online tools to evaluate website accessibility. 

Using the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, it was determined that the Amazon UK website is not very accessible, particularly to people who need to use screen readers. Two big overall violations of web accessibility that Amazon.co.uk commits is in the metadata; it is missing a first level heading, and the document language is not specified. Both of these violations makes it harder for screen readers to read the content of the page, and lack of document language does not make the website accessible for translators. The latter may not be a massive issue, because Amazon does have specific websites for different countries, but it still poses as a major accessibility concern.

Another large violation of web accessibility rules is that none of their images have alternative text. Again, this is an issue that affects people using screen readers, but it also affects people with slower internet connections who may not want to load images.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
The website's homepage is a basic two-column layout primarily with black text on a white background. This design is relatively clean and allows the user to focus on the main content of the page. 

However, on a larger screen, the "Shop by Deparment" automatically shows up as a floating third column, and clutters the page up considerably. Hovering over any option on the "Department" menu opens up another menu to the right, which creates more clutter and just looks messy. This is accentuated by the fact that not all the pop-up menus are the same size, so that if the user was scrolling their mouse up and down the menu, the inconsistencies would be obvious and ugly.

Help and Documentation
A help section can be found on the footer of every page, as is consistent with the general website format. The help options it offers are: 

• Delivery Rates and Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns are Easy
• Manage Your Kindle
• Help

The help list appears to be organised in order of most popular help topics, and each one links to a separate page with dealing specifically with the topic it specifies. The first and last items on the list link to generic help sections with "most popular" help topics on the top of the page, accompanied by a search bar. Breaking the help sections down in this way makes it easier for users to find the topic they are looking for, and minimises any confused clicking around.

The middle three topics link to pages specific to either Amazon Prime, Returns, or Kindles. It is very straightforward and direct so that people looking for help on these topics are able to find what they want straight away, without having to click around on a generic help page.

Conclusion

The Amazon UK website violated more rules than it adhered to -- especially when it came to accessibility, which is disappointing considering that it is an international company that operates mainly online.