Coursera's forum interface Heuristics Evaluation
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PROJECT: Coursera Forum
ROLE: UX Researcher
Duration: November 2020 - December 2020 i
Project Overview
The Product
Coursera is a massive open online course (MOOC) provider that offers massive open online courses, specializations, degrees, professional and master-track courses.
The Scope
I determined that the scope of the evaluation would include both threads, as well as replies of the forum section of the Coursera site. I further chose to evaluate both the User Interface screens (for both threads and replies) as well as the output, as showed in the forum.
Goals
Through heuristics evaluation, I hope to provide insights on how to improve the usability of Coursera's forums and in doing so, improve the learning experience and communication for students. In our study, I hope to answer the following questions:
- What heuristics are being violated? How are they violated and with what severity?
- What recommendations can I give for each violation?
Methodology
Heuristics Used
For this evaluation, I used the heuristics developed by Jakob Nielsen (1994) in the chapter “Heuristic Evaluation” in Usability Inspection Methods. Additional titles were added to the heuristics for clarification from “6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 5” (Neil, n.d.):
- FEEDBACK: Visibility of system status
- METAPHOR: Match between system and the real world
- NAVIGATION: User control and freedom
- CONSISTENCY: Consistency and standards
- PREVENTION: Error prevention
- MEMORY: Recognition rather than recall
- EFFICIENCY: Flexibility and efficiency of use
- DESIGN: Aesthetic and minimalist design
- RECOVERY: Error Recovery
- HELP: Help and documentation
Individual Heuristic Evaluations
To begin the evaluation, I conducted an individual heuristic evaluation of the Coursera forum site. This involved taking multiple passes through the forum to determine where there were issues. The issues were then categorized by the heuristic, from the list above, that was violated and the severity of the violation.
Severity was judged based on a 4-point rating scale taken from Nielsen's “Heuristic Evaluation” chapter, Table 2.3 (1994):
- Cosmetic problem only - need not be fixed unless extra time is available on project
- Minor usability problem - fixing this should be given low priority
- Major usability problem - important to fix, so should be given high priority
- Usability catastrophe - imperative to fix this before product can be released
Takeaways
This report documents my Heuristics Evaluation of Coursera's forum interface. Heuristics evaluation was designed by Jakob Nielsen in 1994 and offers a cheap, fast and easy-to-use usability engineering method. I, as an evaluator, performed an individual analysis of each of the ten heuristics and tracked the adherence and violations of each. These heuristics cover topics such as feedback, visibility, user control, user efficiency, help, error handling, error prevention and use of metaphors that match the real world. Each finding is given a severity rating from 1 (minor usability problem) to 4 (usability catastrophe) and assigned a recommendation.
