- With the navigation bars at the top and along the side, it is pretty easy to know where you are located within the website, which is helpful for this site, considering it has a variety of topics to explore between.
- The site switches between pages and searches within a reasonable amount of time. I was not left wondering what was taking so long or wishing a page would load faster.
2. Match Between System and the Real World
- The site uses words in English, but there is no easy to find option to use other languages.
- All language on the site is pretty easy to understand; there isn't really any lingo that would be unknown to an average visitor.
- Pictures help users connect information on the screen to real life scenarios.
3. User Control and Freedom
- It's pretty easy to understand where you're navigating to on the website before you click on anything. However, once you click on something, it's hard to know where exactly you just came from unless you click the previous page button on your browser.
- No way to decide whether or not you want to backtrack or how far you need to go back before going back a page.
- No reverse navigation on the page, only possible by browser most of the time.
4. Consistency and Standards
- Commands, links, and phrases are all straightforward and standard.
- One thing that was strange was that on the home page, the scrolling banner would have a link that said "read more" which usually means there is a linked article. However, this would simply take you to either a search bar specific to that topic, a list of events, etc.
5. Error Prevention
- Errors were few and far between. One thing I did struggle with, was that at one point I had opted to add some further search parameters to my food search, such as location and restaurant type, and no results were returned. Then I tried to uncheck these additional parameters, but after searching again, it had kept the parameters that I had just tried to erase. The only way to get it to stop was to completely start over at the home page and try again, this time with more success.
- When this error did occur, there was no message or anything to notify me that things were not going as planned, but rather I found out myself.
6. Recognition Rather than Recall
- Most options for navigation are visible to the visitor, and like I've already said, links are fairly straightforward.
- The option to add restaurants or activities to your "itinerary" is pretty interesting and helpful, and is kept on the screen in the top banner. However, to see what you added you have to click and go to another page which lists your chosen activities
7. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
- There is an option to sign in as a "member", but I'm not entirely sure what this would do, or if it would necessarily accelerate the interaction for a seasoned user.
8. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
- There is a pretty even amount of information on the site so that I, as a user, do not feel as if I'm being bombarded with information on everything. However, some areas may be a bit sparse on the information provided, leaving me to continue hunting for information on certain restaurants.
- Enough hierarchy that I can tell what is relevant or irrelevant to my needs. Easy to quickly scan for needed information.
9. Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
- When I did have the only error I came across, I did not receive an error message or any instructions on how to recover. This might just be a user error rather than a website error, but either way, the only way I was able to recover was from completely restarting my searches.
10. Help and Documentation
- The general information for the business running the website was displayed in the footer of every page.
- I was unable to find a link to a page that provided help for users on the website, or answers to questions/problems users might have when visiting the site.
Usability Analysis:
While the website is pretty straightforward, easy to understand, and easy to navigate, there was still a sense of inconsistency. When I searched for a restaurant, some of the results would come up with pictures, and some would not; some would provide a small blurb about the restaurant and some would require clicking on the link to visit the restaurant's profile in order to gather more information. When I did experience an issue with the search function, I was unable to figure out the problem and had to start my search over again from the home page, which would've been really frustrating if I had been trying to search something for a long time and had just found it, or had spent a lot of time searching before realizing that an error had been essentially nullifying all of my search efforts. Decent website and experience as a user, but I think it needs a little more polish to seem totally professional.
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