Heuristic Evaluation of the Phone Menu

Visibility of System Status

The phone menu satisfies this heuristic quite well. The user can see what is happening as they navigate through the phone system’s menus. However, one problem that arose was what was displayed when a call was in progress. This caused some confusion because the user was not sure if a call was being made or not.

Match between system and the real world.

The phone menu satisfied this heuristic well. Users understood the terms used and did not have a problem. The only aspect of this that was raised was the term “contact”. It was suggested that “phone number” or “person” be used instead.

User control and freedom

There are clearly marked “main menu” and “back” buttons ensuring the user could move around the menu easily. However, the system could have benefited from an additional “clear” button the deal with mistakes when inputting phone numbers or contact names. When users made a mistake with the current prototype, they had to “dial” and then “end call” to start again. Similarly, when entering a new contact, users had to go “back” without saving and then select “add new contact” to start again if they had made a mistake.

Consistency and standards

The prototype passed this heuristic well. Users were clear on the meanings of all terms such as “add”, “delete”, “call” and “save”. There were no terms that were ambiguous or unclear.

Error prevention

The phone prototype had a good error handling message when the user was deleting a contact. The confirmation screen was clear and reduced the likelihood of users deleting contacts by mistake. The prototype seemed to have a good balance between usability and error handling. For example, it would have negatively impacted on usability if everything was confirmed by a message simply to present errors. A good example of this is adding a contact. There would not have been much benefit gained from a confirmation message here and the impact of entering an incorrect contact is not as great a deleting one.

Recognition rather than recall

The design of the phone menu satisfies this heuristic well. It is designed to look like a normal telephone so is immediately recognisable to users. The user also does not have to remember what order things need to be done because the keypad is always present on the right hand side of the screen. The presence of “back” and “main menu” buttons also ensures that procedural knowledge is not necessarily required.

Flexibility and efficiency of use

The system did not have much in the way of flexibility but this is not a bad thing. Many users of the system are going to be novice users and as such will not require any modifications. The system does have recent call lists and this allows frequent numbers to be accessed quickly. However, there is not a way to tailor a favourite numbers list.

Aesthetic and minimalist design

The prototype served this heuristic well. Clear language is used that is not overly technical. The delete contact confirmation message is clear and not presents the message without confusing the user. All buttons are clearly labelled with sensible choices of words that are self – explanatory.

Help users recognise, diagnose and recover from errors

The prototype encountered a problem with this heuristic. One of the users I observed added a new contact but mistyped the phone number so that it had an extra digit, so that consequently when attempting to telephone this contact, the user was presented with an error on the phone. The system had not dealt with incorrect data entry. The user became quite confused as to why the error was occurring until they spotted the mistake they had made. A solution might be to limit the number of digits a phone number can have, or have an additional confirmation message to allow the user to double check the phone number they have entered. Another possible solution might be to have the system present an error message when an incorrect number is dialled suggesting that the user checks the phone number and dials again.

Help and documentation

There was no documentation to accompany the phone menu. However, the simplistic and clear design meant that this was not a problem. All users were able to make call and end calls because they recognised the design of the keypad as being similar to normal phones. Documentation may have been useful for users wishing to add and delete contacts but not necessary.