Home - Introduction - Garrett Minster

Visit Fisher Price's website here!

The website I have chosen for my heuristic evaluation is one I have many nostalgic memories for: Fisher Price. Fisher Price is a subsidiary of Mattel; specifically their subsidiary of toys for newborn and preschool age children. Toys like the Pull Along Chatter Phone, Little People, Power Wheels, the Push Along Corn Popper, and Thomas & Friends trains are all sold under the Fisher Price name. I used to visit Fisher Price's website frequently as a child, among other websites dedicated to children's toys and television series. The site was very different when I was a kid. The site was full of videos, virtual toy demos, and games. Visiting Fisher Price's website as a kid felt like visiting a Toys R Us. Whoever the designers of Fisher Price's website were at the time understood their user base well and what would garner and hold attention. Fisher Price's website in the present day is far from the fun site that I used to visit. The site today is primarily an online shopping site. It is similar to ones discussed previously in this class (like Tractor Supply) and features various sections and subsections of the toys they have for sale on the site. As a result, Fisher Price's website is a website I am familiar yet unfamiliar with. I am familiar with how the website once appeared and functioned and I am also familiar with other shopping sites, meaning that I can highlight negative changes made to the site as well as features and functions on the site that function worse than those on similar sites. I also believe that the users who will participate in my test will likely share similar experiences to that of my own, or will have some familiarity with Fisher Price toys, meaning they may be more interested in testing this site compared to another. The people who may participate with this site likely will not have any experience in using this site in recent memory, meaning I will have testers who aren't familiar with the site in its current form. If any of my testers are parents of young children however, they will possibly have experience in using this site and may have some usability errors of their own they can share. All these factors led to my decision to use Fisher Price's website for my usability test. Let's begin the test.