Self Reflection - Garrett Minster

Lessons Learned

When I started working on this assignment, I knew I wanted to choose a website that was unique. I wanted a website that no one else would choose or even a website that may never had been given a heuristic evaluation before. I started thinking of random websites, and I remembered visiting the website for Fisher Price all the time when I was a child, so I decided to inspect Fisher Price's website to see if it would be a good candidate. Upon first viewing the site in its current form, I immediately noticed multiple design errors on the home screen and even more as I began digging deeper into the site. It seemed the more I dug, the more issues I found. The usability test videos truly opened my eyes to just how poorly designed Fisher Price's website really is. Sarah and Daniel's opinions were negative and blunt. They were both frequently frustrated and disappointed in the site. Being greeted with a pop up to enter a contest upon start up, having difficulty locating prices for products and warranty info, and taking issue with the site's search filters are just a handful of examples of issues Sarah and Daniel had with the site. Though Naga enjoyed the site more, he still occasionally got confused such as when a Mega Construx toy came up when he was searching for elephant toys. Though my three testers liked the look of Fisher Price's website at first, like me, they kept finding issues as they kept looking further into the site. I learned many things while conducting this test. As discussed above, Fisher Price's website is far from perfect in its current form. This taught me that no matter how big or popular a company may be, they can still make obvious errors in site design. This is encouraging to me as an up-and-coming web designer, as I hope to avoid all of the mistakes that Fisher Price and Mattel made with their site. I also learned that people look for and anticipate consistency in design between shopping sites. Sarah and Daniel wished that Fisher Price took some pages out of Amazon's book in terms of site design. Amazon is the leader of online retail in 2024, so users are familiar with Amazon's design elements, and they enjoy the features Amazon has. If I were to design a shopping site of my own, I would likely conduct surveys among users to see what they like and what they dislike about sites like Amazon or Walmart so that my shopping site can be consistent in design with other sites while also improving on other site's designs.

Final Thoughts

Before this class started, I purchased both textbooks and read them cover to cover. I thought that everything I had learned from the textbooks was all I needed to know about design and usability testing. I was wrong. Every assignment in this course was an eye opener. The 3 websites, the 10 user interfaces, and the Tractor Supply evaluation all taught me that there is at least one major flaw in virtually every user interface I have interacted with. Conducting this usability test was no different. Conducting my own heuristic evaluation from beginning to end of a website of my own choosing was an amazing experience. All four people who got involved with this assignment (Sarah, Naga, Daniel, and I) all noticed different flaws and liked/disliked different aspects of the site. Sarah thought it was a good thing that Fisher Price's home page had a banner mentioning recent product recalls while Daniel disliked this feature. Sarah and Daniel did not like the use of affiliate links to purchase products from Fisher Price while Naga did not seem bothered by this. This showed that everyone has different opinions on site design that should be accounted for. With differences in opinion like this, middle ground should be reached in deciding what edits should be made and how they should be implemented. Sarah, Naga, and Daniel also experienced similar errors and issues despite their occasional differences in opinion as mentioned above. These similarities in experience and opinion show how easy it is for users to experience issues with Fisher Price's site. If I conducted six tests instead of three, I imagine the other users would have experienced these consistent issues like difficulty locating warranty info or disliking the gift card pop up. Fisher Price and Mattel can do much better with the design of their website, and I hope to avoid the errors that they made as I continue to design websites of my own in the years ahead. This course and this assignment's contents were invaluable in teaching me what I need to do as a designer and what I must not do. I will always look back on this class with fondness and pride over what I had accomplished and what I had learned. Thank you for following along with me throughout my test.