Heuristic Usability Evaluation for Facebook applicatoin

1. Heuristic usability
evaluation
BY SOKTEANG NGOV

2. Application: Facebook

3. Visibility of system status:
 The visibility of the system status is really good. For example, when
there is a network connection problems, it shows “No Internet
Connection” on the top of the feeds when the users slide down to
refresh the top feeds. This way, the users know what is going on, and
what to do next.

4. Match between system and the
real world:
 We can also say that the system use a lot of short and easy-to-
understand words, like “People you may know”, “Messages”,
“Share”, and “Search”. In a status, Facebook puts the information in
logical order. For instance, David with Julie & Danny at Zaman
University, along with the description of what we want to say, like “Is
having android class”.

5. User control and freedom:
 When we post a status, Facebook allows us to tag other friends,
location of where we are at, plus our emotions or the activity we are
doing into just one status. The users can change the privacy of the
status, photos for who can see the photos. Also, users can edit
delete the status of their own as well.

6. Consistency and standards:
 I think the words and actions are quite consistent, and it does not
have the same words that mean the same thing. Although, if we use
Facebook for the first time, some words are new and it take a bit
time to learn those words and how to use all features in Facebook.

7. Error prevention:
 Personally, I do not use a lot of error prevention but when users try to
do something like deactivate their account that Facebook try to
warn the users many times before they decided to commit the
action.

8. Recognition rather than recall:
 It does not require users to use a lot of memory to remember thing.
There are search features to find things. However, sometimes, when I
try to load what I posted since 2010, it might consume more time to
scroll down and load all the histories to see what I wanted.

9. Flexibility and efficiency of use:
 There are many groups that I have joined and created. So
Facebook makes it easy for the users by putting the most-frequent-
used group on the top, so that when I try to access to those groups,
it takes me less time. Moreover, when I click on the News Feed
button on the top of the screen (android), it will refresh and update
news feed for me without scrolling the screen down the page
anymore.

10. Aesthetic and minimalist design:
 There are 3 features that users might use very often, those include
News Feed, Messages, and Notifications. All information in those 3
features are needed and are the main reasons why we use
Facebook. Other information that are not often used or irrelevant is
hidden or can be hidden.

11. Help users recognize, diagnose,
and recover from errors:
 Similar to what I had mentioned above, the error message is shown
in a normal language (not code), for example, “You can still post
while offline”, “Connection Lost”, “Tap to Retry”. There are actually
some sign putting along with the error messages.

12. Help and documentation:
 There are online document and help where users can actually
access when they need. The help is categorized into separate
topic. Some are “Join Facebook”, Login & Password”. It uses
keywords that users can easily understand and know where to go
into. Users can ask questions while there are most-asked question
asked by Facebook users. Most answers provide solution to users’
questions.

13. Thank you 