uP2 Permissions Manager Heuristic Analysis

Added by Gary Thompson, last edited by Gary Thompson on Feb 16, 2007
General
No starting point
The landing screen shows interactions that assume a workflow context, but the screen does not give any context. Cancel - cancel what? Select All - select all what? Where am I?

No page titles or descriptions
The views of the permissions manager have no page titles or page descriptions to define the user's place in the world. The user is left to divine it somehow by what is presented on the screen (which also suffers from poor context/status).

No call to action
There is no indication of a call to action. Five form buttons and all are homogenous in emphasis - which one should I click?. Also, the same five form buttons appear on every page without changing context.


Navigation & Form Buttons
Improper placement of the Cancel button
The user should not be confronted with a Cancel button as the topmost element of the page. This is confusing, and leads the user to an error by cancelling when they do not want to.

Improper use and labeling of buttons
The cancel button is used as a "home" or "return" link, further obscuring its use. In the selection process, it does not make sense for a user to cancel the selection - they have not yet started any action to be cancelled. Also, the submit button is used for "next" when normal convention is to use it for finalizing and completing the process (the last step).

No Back or Next buttons
The user is trapped in the flow with no step transition option other than submit or to totally cancel the process.

Multiple actions each labeled differently yet the same result 2 4 5
On the landing page, after making a selection, the Cancel, Deselect All, and Reset Form buttons all appear to do the same thing.


Workflow
Obscure selection process
The process used for selecting a role for editing (unclear that this is even the workflow?) is unconventional and confusing.


Labels & Terminology
Confusing terminology
In the same list you have "Groups Manager" which is a person or role and "uPortal Channel Subscription" which is an action or category. There are terms like "Manage this group's members" with no context to "this" - manage what group's members?


Error Recovery & Help
No help
There is no help available.
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Comments (1)

 

  1. Feb 20, 2007

    Jason Shao says:

    There was an article recently about integrating domain specific help that our he...

    There was an article recently about integrating domain specific help - that our help has been overly "click-here, do this" and that what our users are often looking for is expert guidance: e.g. "share with only these people if not everyone should see this" that seems like a useful design point for the admin tools.