Cognitive Walkthrough
Briefly, the software is for finding helpers around my location on the
subjects I need help on. This is a user system, so the sign-up process is
needed. On signing up, the user put information about him such as name,
location, things he needs help on, and things he can help others. The whole
purpose of this system is to find the helper who can help me and possibly I
can help, also. It is an iPhone application, and we hope to extend it to the
web.
It is not something that is commonly used before, so we assume no
general information about the system. When a user first runs the application,
it prompts the user with three buttons which are [Register], [Login] and [Try
me]. There are only these three buttons displayed on the first screen so it is
straight-forward to users what options they have. The user happens to be a
registered user so he pushes [Login] button to login.
After the user logs in he sees a list of helpers he found last time on the
screen and five control buttons on the top. The five buttons are [Search],
[Map], [Help List], [Message], and [Logout]. The user wants to get help on CS
465 class. He pushes [Search] button to search for the helpers but he finds
that the screen it shows after pushing [Search] button is the result from the
last search. He pushes [Help List] button to see if that is the correct function.
[Help List] shows the list of the subjects he input last time. He was not
so sure if he can modify the list. He finds the [+] button on the right top
corner and recognizes it to be the [add] button. He successfully adds CS 465
to the list. He wants to get rid of some of the subjects he already got helped
on. There is only [edit] button and [+] so he thinks [edit] might do the job.
He pushes the [edit] button and the list changes its look so that it is
“editable.” However, there is no explicit button to remove an item from the
list. There is red buttons next to every item on the list. He touches that
button, and [delete] button appears on the right. And he successfully deletes
the items he does not want from the list.
Finally he presses [Search] button to search for the helpers around him
who can help him. The GPS feature of the iPhone is shown and many pins
around the current location are shown. The names of helpers are shown on
the pins. He pushes the closest pin and the screen changes to the list of the
helpers available at that location. Then he selects the person who is on the
first on the list. He then presses [Messages] button to send a message to
that person to arrange the meeting to get helped.
Heuristic Evaluation
1. Validity of system status
