Prototype evaluation

To evaluate our prototype and improve it we used two methods: empirical evaluation, through usability tests and analytic evaluation, via heuristic methods[7].

Usability Tests
To evaluate our prototype we decided to utilize a sample of five testers and let them test the framework to perform User Login, Searching and Training the system using the thinking-aloud protocol[8]. Those tests consited of giving the users some brief instruction on what action to perform on our prototype, such as login or training the system, and let them use the framework to highlight its usability and arise possible issues. The video on the right is an example of how the testing was conducted with one of our five test users. From the tests we gather new system requirements and highlighted some weak points such as confusing user interface and navigation that will be improved in the future development of the system.

Results highlights
The results of this methodology produced similary results across the population sample. The most significant results were that the majority of sample users (four out of five) found the interface easy to navigate and memorable. The high number of buttons in the main dashboard was pointed out by two users as a potential cause of confusion and 60% of the testers highlighted how the system response was predictable and coherent.

Heuristic Evaluation

HEURISTIC	DESCRIPTION	SOLUTION	SEVERITY
Visibility of system status.	When uploading the document or analysing the data the user feel lost because of time taken by computation.	Add a loading screen and a confirmation one.	2 - Minor usability problem
User control and freedom.	User doesn’t know how to go back if the wrong research option is clicked.	Add a go back arrow button.	3 - Major usability problem
Recognition rather than recall.	User feel memory overloaded when navigating the pages due to lack of section header in each page.	Add title in each page.	1 - Cosmetic problem.