Heuristic Analysis of Management Concepts Desktop Website
Management Concepts is a premier provider of learning solutions and human capital advisory services for the public sector. For nearly 50 years, they have worked with every major entity in the federal government to identify and address gaps, enhance performance, and unleash the potential of more than one million individuals.
Management Concepts desktop website is an e-commerce site that helps individuals and groups to find courses and certificate programs. A heuristic evaluation was conducted by using Jacob Nielsen’s Ten Usability Heuristics and Ben Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules. This evaluation analysis includes 29 findings based on a severity scale from 1 to 4 and a cognitive walkthrough with recommendations to improve the usability based on 3 tasks a user can accomplish.
View the complete presentation slides here.
Heuristic Review
The evaluation objective was to find usability issues on the Management Concepts desktop website that violate the heuristics. Using these simple rating systems, the entire website was evaluated.
There were many minor issues found on different sections of the website. Although they do not interfere with usability too much, they do ultimately need to be addressed. Here are some examples of minor issues that are at the bottom of the priority list:
Some serious usability issues were found throughout the website. These issues force the users to put more effort than needed ultimately causing the frustrated users to leave the page and seek solutions elsewhere. Below are some examples of these issues.
More than anything, it was a bit alarming to find so many catastrophic issues, especially in the e-commerce section. Each step of this section violated a minimum of 5 heuristics, making the checkout process almost impossible for the users to complete. This will have a major effect on the revenue in the worst way possible and needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
Cognitive Walkthrough
Task 1: Training Search
Clients of Management Concepts will generally land on this page to search and look up specific courses/training.
Task Flow:
Issues:
Solutions:
Task 2: E-Commerce Checkout
Once they have located the desired courses and added them to the shopping cart, they are required to fill out this checkout process to complete the purchase.
Task Flow:
Issues:
Solutions:
Task 3: Program Enrollment
In order to enroll is a training program or series of courses, they are asked to complete the Letter of Intent form with personal/contact information to indicate their interests in a specific domain.
Task Flow:
Issues:
The enrollment page allows the users to make errors without a clear indication of how to prevent or resolve them.
Solutions:
The system supports the users in making fewer errors and clear error indicators allow them to efficiently address them.
