Task Submission: Heuristic Evaluation of GNOME
Heuristic Evaluation of GNOME
Evaluator: Nnah Linzy
Date: 12th march 2024 – 27th march 2024
Product: Ubuntu 23.10 (GNOME 45)
Task: Heuristic Evaluation of GNOME
Device: Lenovo Laptop
Introduction
Based on Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics and vigorous Research and evaluation I have come up with a few issues and their suggested fix and a few general suggests to make GNOME more efficient and user friendly. Coming up with each of these issues I was trying to test for functionality and usability. To find these issues I was trying to see myself as a new user that transferred from using a windows operating system to a Linux system with GNOME. In each step of finding this issues I was trying to find a better way we could give our users the easy to use approach in computing. I have categorised my issues chronologically based on the 10 heuristics of Nielson and they go thus.
1. Visibility of System Status
Issue Report: When you right click on the desktop, it doesn’t give you the opportunity to refresh your screen.
Once you on the desktop of GNOME the right clicking action gives the users a simple short cut to sort files on the desktop, creating files, taking them to the display settings or helping them personalise their desktop e.t.c. These give the users not just an easy movement to help better their experience but also give them a sense of control. Adding the a refresh action in that menu short cut once users right click also adds a sense of control and reduce their need to also ask for assistance when they make a certain change and it isn’t displayed; they could just right click and click on refresh and the change they made could be updated and displayed giving them a sense of satisfaction.
Suggested Solution: Introduce a context menu option for refreshing the desktop environment to give users a little sense of control and satisfaction.
2. Match Between System and the Real World
Issue Report: File saving format in LibreOffice Applications is unfamiliar, causing confusion.
LibreOffice applications like the Writer, Cal, Impress, Maths… Have very complex formats that are not easily understood on first glance. For instance a user finish working on the LibreOffice Math application and interns on saving it but when he goes to the savings format he finds savings formats like ODF formula and MathML.20 and having to not know which means what without having to go search each other them before being able to save his file is not just overwhelming but very time strenuous considering the user had a limited time to save the file and be on the go, he would have to take a pause which could be detrimental.
Suggested Solution: Give the users more common file formats or clearly explain the use and benefit of each format or give them a clear default format, matching users' expectations from other operating systems.
3. User Control and Freedom
Issue Report: Difficulty in closing files due to unclear visual cues.
When a file or folder is opened be it from the desktop or activities tab and the users have viewed or worked on the information they want and intern to close the file a folder they have to rely on they sense of the x is on the far top right corner and when they get there they still have to look at it to be clear they are clicking on the right x. This issue comes in relation generally for people whose eye site are not really the best. Having to be able to hover over a certain action and having some form of indication you are hovering or intern to click on them gives the users more freedom and understanding of the action they are about to take.
Suggested Solution: Enhancing the close(x), minimize(-), and maximize buttons with a color change when hovering on them to indicate interactability provides users with a sense of control and better understanding.
4. Consistency and Standards
Issue Report: No clear indication of the action that is taking when a file is dragged from the desktop into a folder.
When a user drags a file from the desktop into a folder that is closed on the desktop there is no clear indication of if the folder is being copied or completely moved from the desktop into the folder. When the user drags and drops the file and gets no indication whether the file was moved or copied and still seeing the said file displayed on the desktop will give them a false impression that what they were trying to do be it copying or moving the file was not a success therefore making them to want to perform the action again and when they are on able to do it again because the folder already has the said file they might find it frustrating and will only be able to understand what happened only when the said folder is opened.
Suggested Solution: Providing clear visual or textual feedback indicating whether a file is being copied or moved, aligning with user expectations.
5. Error Prevention
Issue Report: When multiple folders / Files are opened, that is, more than 4 folders, there is no direct clear indication that a folder is already open.
When the user opens more than 4 folders let’s say they are trying to view or get information to use to, it is a little difficult to know which folder has already when opened without having to click on the file manager in the activities tab not just once but twice which stops or breaks whatever process or action the user was performing to know or view the information they are looking for and having to not know which folder is open at a glance and making the user having to open the folder again and failing to do so is a leading factor to potential confusion. For instance having to open the same folder more than once doesn’t give the users a clear error message to indicate why they can’t open it again and having just the file manager giggle on the activities tab is good but isn’t entirely helpful.
Suggested Solution: When the user hovers over the file manager there should be a display of the various folders that are opened, Display a clear notification or bring the already-open file / folder to focus when the user tries to open it the second time, preventing user error.
6. Recognition Rather Than Recall
Issue Report: LibreOffice Math opens with an overwhelming number of tips.
When LibreOffice app (Math) opens up there are tips ranging from 1 – 200+ and these are tips that not only concern LibreOffice Math but the other LibreOffice apps and for a user to see they have to go through all the 200+ tips before they can start working in it could be a little overwhelming and because studies have shown that when a human mine gets overwhelmed with information to read and remember they pick the easy way out which in this case will be to ignore and close the tips box and they find issues later on that could have been solved easily based off those tips they would have to go to search engines or seek for help in the help section.
Suggested Solution: Lets offer them context-sensitive tips based on user actions, that is, when they initially open LibreOffice apps they get tips about getting started which shouldn’t be more than 3 or 4 and as they take further actions more tips regarding that action can pop up reducing the need for users to remember information from an overload of tips.
7. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
General Suggestion: Allow saving documents in PDF format directly, without the need for an export option.
In each of the LibreOffice app there is a feature to export as a pdf which is good but in the case where the user has already gone to the saving process and remembers they had to save it as a pdf, they shouldn’t have to cancel the process rather we should integrate the PDF saving option in the file savings menu to ease the document-saving process.
8. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
Issue Report: Rhythmbox's lack of color and animation.
Going through Rhythmbox as a user who loves music while I’m doing other things on my computer wasn’t entirely welcoming, the interface that is. The main issue I had with rhythmbox was the fact that is lacked colors to increase the vibe behind it. For instance having a blank white background layout for where the songs would be displayed wasn’t giving me as the user a reason to stay on it even while I don’t have any songs. Also the side menus doesn’t give the user a sense of interactability because they do not indicate if they are clickable or not.
Suggested Solution: Enhance Rhythmbox with visual elements to engage users, these visual elements could be a stand still catchy image or a moving catch and colourful image that is bright and beautiful but does not overshadow the actual contents of the page.
9. Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
Issue Report: Once a PDF document's text is highlighted, there's no way to remove the highlight.
In the case where the user wants to give notes or comments on a PDF document and he chooses to highlight the section he wants to made the comments off of and realises he highlighted the wrong section, there is no means or a clear indication that will give the user the ability to fix their mistake thus producing an error they can not recover easily from.
Suggested Solution: Implement a functionality to easily remove text highlighting in PDFs, aiding error recovery and giving the users whose humanly nature is to make mistakes a chance to fix it with ease.
10. Help and Documentation
Issue Report: The display of PDF documents in a folder does not stand out, making it hard for users to recognize document types.
Once PDF documents are saved in a folder and they want to be accessed it shows a minimalistic version of the content of the PDF file which is not as clear and what shows more is the name of the file and is hard for users to tell if it’s a PDF or a picture.
Suggested Solution: Improve file icons and previews in file explorer to make document types more distinguishable, supported by helpful tooltips or documentation.
General Suggestions for Improvement
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Enhance file explorer usability by indicating active files more clearly and allowing single-click actions to minimize and maximize.
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Improve the user interface in Rhythmbox to make menus appear clickable and distinguish active sections with color coding. As well as switching from songs to categories
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Address layout issues in document-saving processes to make them more intuitive and reduce cognitive load. That is Users should be able to save documents in the pdf format without having to click on the export as pdf in the document it self
Resources
GNOME Design Contribution guide
Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for user interface design
https://youtu.be/2Z2srDifJp0?si=wq2KSdKwMZALazVZ
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-to-conduct-a-heuristic-evaluation/