Heuristic Evaluation
Report
Identified Issue #1:
Brief description: Insufficient navigation controls on top header of Home page.
Heuristic principle violated: 4: Consistency and Standards
Severity code assignment: 2 – Major Problem – has significant potential impact on usability.
Explanation: The lack of standard persistent navigation controls in the header of the SeaWorld.com Home page violates Jakob Nielsen’s website usability heuristic, Consistency and Standards. Modern website design conventions require that users are provided sufficient navigation controls which should be placed in the header of a Home page. The lack of persistent navigation controls creates user uncertainty, and also erodes user confidence in the brand being represented. Also, a utility menu containing common links such as About Us, Contact Us, Directions and Our Mission is likewise unavailable within the header of domain Pages.
Identified Issue #2:
Brief description: A paragraph of approximately 100 words occupies the top-center of the Home page.
Heuristic principle violated: 8: Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
Severity code assignment: 3 – Minor Problem – low priority, but should be noted.
Explanation: What appears to be an excerpt from the mission statement, a paragraph of approximately 100 prominently displayed words, is presented to users when landing on the Home page. The Aesthetic and Minimalist Design heuristic is violated because of the presentation format implemented, and the lack of value within the textual content. A user with the goal of accomplishing a task will likely interpret the content as clutter or a distraction. As a result, not only will users’ experiences be negatively impacted, represented brands’ images will also potentially suffer.
Identified Issue #4:
Brief description: No textbox search control is available.
Heuristic principle violated: 7: Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
Severity code assignment: 2 – Major Problem – has significant potential impact on usability.
Explanation: The lack of a textbox search control violates the Flexibility and Efficiency of Use heuristic. Users are resigned to scanning excessive content or reading through multiple navigation drop-down lists as a way to locate information or resources. While inexperienced users may prefer to use a scanning method for locating information or resources, experienced users are denied a significant amount of flexibility and efficiency.
Identified Issue #5:
Brief description: Readily available help information such as an FAQ page is not available to users.
Heuristic principle violated: 10: Help and Documentation
Severity code assignment: 2 – Major Problem – has significant potential impact on usability.
Explanation: A general FAQ page is not available for users to reference. The absence of a comprehensive FAQ page is a help related website usability violation. While there is limited FAQ information offered for some general categories, the items are quite limited. Additionally, a form for asking questions is not offered. The lack of readily available answers to common question combined the inability to ask specific questions potentially leaves users with a high degree of uncertainty, perhaps enough uncertainty to abandon the website and its brand.
Identified Issue #6:
Brief description: The navigation drop-down lists provided on subdomain pages are exceedingly long.
Heuristic principle violated: 6: Recognition Rather than Recall
Severity code assignment: 2 – Major Problem – has significant potential impact on usability.
Explanation: The navigation drop-down lists provided in the headers of subdomain Home pages violate the Recognition Rather than Recall heuristic, as they are too long and contain links from multiple categories. For example, when a user is comparing website content such as different ticket prices, a user must either remember the links name or read the length of the list which also contains categories such as various packages, groups, teachers, state workers and schools discounts among others while hoping to recall the link’s name. This type of navigation structure places a high cognitive load on users which could otherwise be avoided by using a more organized hierarchical approach.
Identified Issue #3:
Brief description: Unable to back navigate directly to the domain Home page from a subdomain Home page.
Heuristic principle violated: 3: User Control and Freedom
Severity code assignment: 2 – Major Problem – has significant potential impact on usability.
Explanation: After navigating to the SeaWorld Orlando page, a user is not provided a clickable navigation control for returning to the SeaWorld Home page. By not allowing users the freedom to leave the subdomain and directly return to the parent domain, the website is in violation of usability heuristic, 3: User Control and Freedom. The SeaWorld logo located at the top left of each subdomain is linked to its Home page only, and no link is available to the main SeaWorld.com Home page. Users must manually edit the URL within the browser to navigate directly back to SeaWorld.com from any subdomain page, or a user must use the browsers back button multiple times.
The scope of the heuristic evaluation includes the SeaWorld.com Home page and the main subdomains within SeaWorld.com; specifically, SeaWorld.com/orlando, SeaWorld.com/san-antonio and SeaWorld.com/san-diego.
The individual heuristic evaluation conducted against SeaWorld.com was performed using Jakob Nielson’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (Neilsen). The decision to utilize Neisen’s set of 10 heuristics was based upon the comprehensive properties of the heuristics. Severity codes utilized for the evaluation were selected from a succinct set of severity codes provided by Carol Barnum’s book, Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, set ... test! (Barnum, 2021, p. 49). Barnum’s severity codes range from a number 1 indicating a catastrophe to a number 4 which indicates a cosmetic problem.
There were 6 heuristic violations identified during the evaluation. Out of the 6 violations, 5 of the violations received a severity code assignment indicating a major problem which has a significant potential impact on usability. These 5 major problems should be prioritized for correction as soon as possible. Also, 1 violation received a severity code assignment indicating a minor problem which should be documented, and then corrected when resources are available. The data obtained during the heuristic evaluation, qualitative data, will be used to construct a website usability test plan.
References
Barnum, C. M. (2021). Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, set ... test! Morgan Kaufmann is an imprint
of Elsevier.
Nielsen, Jakob. “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.” Nielsen Norman
Group, 14 April 1994, www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/.