Presto Heuristic Evaluation/Redesign
Overview
Project Type: Heuristic Evaluation
Roles: UX/UI Designer, Usability Evaluator
Team: Noah Adams Tyshynski, Obed Cundangan, Jack Mosquite
Summary: For this project, our team conducted a heuristic evaluation of the Presto mobile iOS app. Referencing the Nielsen Norman Group’s 10 Usability Heuristics, we evaluated one specific task flow within the Presto app to highlight key usability issues and redesigned these screens in Figma to present a potential solution.
The Problem Space
Selecting an App
For this project, we had the option to evaluate any app of our choosing. As a group we knew we wanted to select an app that we were all familiar with and had shared frustrations with. As we are all from Toronto and frequently use the city’s public transit system, we decided to evaluate the Presto iOS mobile app. Presto is used across the GTA’s transit system as well as other transit systems in Ontario to manage fares and transit passes.
In order to confirm that other users aside from ourselves also had frustrations with the usability of the Presto app, we looked at reviews of the app on the Apple App Store. As we suspected, thousands of other users also found the app frustrating to use. This was evidently clear after reading user reviews and discovering that the app has a rating of 1.7 out of 5 stars from almost 4 thousand ratings.
Reviews of the Presto App
The Process
Evaluation Tools
In order to effectively evaluate and quantify the severity of the usability issues of the Presto app, we referred to the Nielsen Norman Group’s 10 Usability Heuristics which are highlighted below. These heuristics are used as a guideline and general rules of thumb to ensure that designs are comprehensible, effective, and user friendly.
When evaluating the usability of the app, we identified numerous heuristic violations and assigned them a severity rating based on this scale to the right
Cosmetic problem only; doesn’t need to be fixed unless time allows
2. Minor usability problem; fix has low priority
3. Major usability problem: fix has high priority
4. Usability catastrophe: imperative to fix before product can be released
What Will We Evaluate?
Given that the Presto app has a number of features and functions, we knew that we couldn’t evaluate the entire app within the scope of this project. That said, we decided to focus on one of the primary task flows that users navigate; loading funds from their credit/debit cards onto their Presto card. Below you can see the current steps required to complete this task flow.
In order to simplify this task flow and our analysis of it, we broke it up into 3 key stages;
- Selecting load amount
- Entering payment information
- Loading funds from the app onto the users’ Presto card
Usability Issues
With our specific task flow selected, we evaluated the current screens and experience of loading funds onto your Presto card and identified various heuristic violations and usability issues. Below are the 6 screens/steps in the task flow that we thought could be improved.
Stage 1: Select Load Amount
Heuristic Violation 1: Error Prevention
Severity Rating: 2.
Usability Issues:
- It’s easy to miss selecting a payment method before pressing “Buy Now”.
- The “Buy Now” button appears in an active state despite missing information (entering the amount of money you want to load and selecting a payment method are both required to move forward).
Recommendations:
- Add radio buttons next to the payment methods to indicate that the user must make a selection.
- Leave the “Buy Now” button grayed out until the user has inputted all the required information.
Heuristic Violation 2: Recognition Rather than Recall
Severity Rating: 2.
Usability Issues:
- There is no option to use previously used or saved address information.
- There is no option to save entered payment information for future use.
Recommendations:
- Provide the option to save payment and address information for future use from the checkout page.
- Provide the option to use previously saved information.
Severity Rating: 3.
Usability Issues:
- Error messages are unclear and vague.
- If payment fails at checkout, the system takes users back to the “Select Amount” screen instead of returning to the previous page to edit their payment info.
This error message is not helpful as it implies that the user must use a different payment method altogether when they may have simply incorrectly entered one aspect of a valid payment method. Forcing users to restart the entire task flow is also very frustrating.
Recommendations:
- Make error messages specific and comprehensive.
- Return to the payment page after an error is identified to allow the user to make the necessary changes.