Discord
A Heuristic Evaluation
Overview
I conducted a heuristic evaluation of the Discord IOS mobile app using established human factors principles. The resulting document elaborates on five systemic principle violations, their impact on users and recommendations for improvement.
Find the complete document here.
The Process
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Becoming a User- the first step involves familiarizing myself with the product, immersing myself in its use cases and systematically experiencing all features.
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Users Inquiries- In order to understand the users of Discord, two user inquiries were conducted. Product reviews were analyzed from five different sources including customer support and users were interviewed in person and while engaging in communication while using the platform.
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Reporting and Documentation-The final stage involves organizing and categorizing violations by usability principles, understanding impacts on users, establishing priority and determining recommendations.
Principles
Five principles were selected and used as the basis for the principle evaluation. They are as follows:
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Simplicity refers to an application or website's tendency to reduce clutter and complexity.
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Transparency refers to the degree to which a system makes relevant underlying processes visible to users.
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Discoverability refers to how well a user can find or discover certain features that they are looking for.
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Feedback means that every action should be accompanied by a response of a system that clearly communicates that the action has been received and what the current status of the system is.
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Value proposition is the degree to which a user can understand a product's worth without reading a description or being explicitly told its functions or capabilities.
Conclusion
All in all, it is apparent that the discord mobile app was an adaptation of their web browser and desktop versions, and did not fully take into account the mobile experience. Many important aspects of the app are only readily apparent to users of the other versions and newcomers who solely use the mobile version will be left struggling to muddle their way through.