Usability Study

WEB SITE : Amazon.com

Select a portion of the Website that you have been assigned.

You are to perform a heuristic evaluation of that Website or product. You are required to use Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for this assignment, available online at: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

To guide you in your complete analysis of the usability analysis, you are required to identify at least one scenario that reflects how a user is likely to use your Website or product in real-life. Try and replicate the user experience as part of the study heuristic evaluation.

This can be very general — if you were evaluating a hotel or airline website, for example, you might think about someone trying to cash in all their frequent “traveler” points, or someone trying to trade in their points as part of a transaction. Your goal here is to develop a basic scenario that will guide your heuristic evaluation.

Using the scenario, you will then systematically evaluate the interface – screen by screen on a transactional basis of your chosen site or product, checking to see which interface elements you encounter (if any) result in problematic experiences. Once you experience challenging experiences, you will document these areas and identify ways in which these areas can be improved potentially in order to avoid violating any of Nielsen’s heuristics.

Note: You should work from your scenario, and not work from the heuristics (i.e., don’t take each heuristic one at a time, looking for heuristic violations on the site).

Your paper should be 4-6 pages in length. You must cite all sources using APA format. It is strongly encouraged you integrate at least 2-3 screenshots of your user experience to include the outputs of your study. When responding, make sure to answer each of these questions:

Identify the website or product you have been assigned (including a screenshot), and briefly describe the reason you selected the section of the Website evaluated.

Describe the scenario you used to focus your evaluation, and explain how you approached the site/product with respect to the usability heuristics.

Provide a detailed analysis of the usability flaws you found for this site, along with a) the heuristics each flaw violates, and b) an explanation of why this flaw violates those heuristics.

Discuss some possible design recommendations that could improve the site, explaining how each recommended change would address the usability flaws you identified above