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Android Application Review - Onavo

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 17 April 2012 0 komentar

Evaluation Plan
System Identification
Name: Onavo
Purpose: Monitor's mobile data usage on an Android phone and gives suggestions to the user based on the data it gathers.
Target Users:Android mobile device users with a limited data plan since unlimited data plan users would most likely not care about how much data they use.

Tasks andActivities

Check the data plan advice for the daily data plan advice.
Check out which app is using the most data every week.
Check the detailed use of the most data-using app and restrict it to only use Wi-Fi.
Set the Data Plan cap to 2GB.
Check the data usage by time for monthly usage.

Metrics

Visualization of data usage: Scale 0 – 10, 10 being excellent visualization
Advice for data plan: “Poor,” “Mediocre,” “OK,” “Good,” or “Great” advice
Usage of graphs: Scale 0 – 10, 10 being excellent display and usage of graphs
Effectiveness of graphs: Scale 0 – 10, 10 being excellent at displaying information on graphs

JakobNielson's Heuristic Evaluation

Visibility of System Status

If there is a long wait in the navigation between the screens, there is a loading popup that informs the user that it's taking time to load.
When the app first started, it had to pull data from the carrier and load it so it had no data at all to display. Instead of displaying nothing, it displayed a “Loading...” text where the amount of data used should have been.
The Widget has a great real-time update of data usage.
The notification bar includes an icon of the app to show the user that the app is currently running and monitoring data usage.

Match Between System and the Real World

All the labels and buttons are in plain text and I can understand what each thing does. I didn't have to read instructions on how to use the app so there is a good connection between the system and the real world.

User Control and Freedom

Since this is an Android system, there is a designated “Back” button on the phone itself. If a user accidentally goes to the wrong displaying of data usage, the user can simply hit the “Back” button and return to the previous screen.
The user doesn't really edit anything on the app besides some information to be displayed. If they make a mistake on what they want displayed, they have to go back in to the settings to change it back. But this is pretty much the case for all apps out in the market.

Consistency and Standards

The functionality of the app's buttons stay consistent throughout the entire app and there was no point during my evaluation that I wondered what each button does. The naming convention is persistent throughout the app.

Error Prevention

There most likely is a good error prevention design since it deals with pulling data usage from the carrier. The error prevention is probably done all in the background since I didn't run in to any mechanisms within the app that prevents an error.
The Widget for the app can be resized to be too small to display any data usage information.

Recognition Rather Than Recall

There really was no recalling of information when evaluating the app. The purpose of this app was to display and calculate data for the user so the user doesn't have to keep track of it themselves. This app does a really good job at monitoring all data usage and reporting it back to the user.

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

This app definitely caters to both experienced and inexperienced users. It is very easy to use and extremely easy to learn. There really is no flexibility aspect of this app since it's so simple and effective.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

Although there is a lot of information displayed for data usage, it is all relevant and can be helpful to the user in one way or another. The only problem I see here would be the clutter of information on one screen. The alternative would be to make more screens to display different categories of information. However, this approach would add more complexity to the app so it's more of a trade-off.

Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors

I didn't make any triggers considered errors by the app so I couldn't evaluate this section.
I would imagine a force close dialog would pop up for a forced close, but that is an Android system dialog not related to the app.

Help and Documentation

On the first usage on every screen, there is a pop up message. The message explains what information is displayed on each screen and how to use the screen to change what is displayed.
Some pop up messages also tell the user what the app will do with the data once it gathers more information in the future.

Conclusion

Assessment

Overall, this app is very good quality and conveys a lot of useful information to the user. The visibility of the system status is excellent and portrays a lot of information to the user. There is a very clear match between the system and the world so that the user understands all the information the app is trying to convey. The user has a lot of control over the navigation of the app and freedom of information displayed. The labels and buttons are consistent throughout the app and the user doesn’t get confused as to what means what. I am pretty sure the error prevention is done in the background so I say their error prevention is good since I haven’t ran in to any errors. This app is really flexible, easy to use and caters to new users very well. The aesthetic and minimalist design is perfect since it displays a lot of information but not too much information that is not needed by the user. I have not seen any error messages. The help and documentation is excellent, especially for new users. If I had a limited data plan instead of unlimited, I would definitely use this app to monitor my data usage.

Insights Gained

Using Nielson's Ten Usability heuristics definitely gave me a good insight on how to develop for the usability of the users. I find this list very helpful and will refer to it in the future when I'm designing a user interface. I also find that the heuristics are broad in the sense that the developer can choose whatever method they want to so that items in the list are satisfied. I am planning on using this for my future internship since it's heavily user-based and involves a lot of human interaction. I was interested in user interface development before and these usability heuristics increased my interests in developing quality user interfaces.

I also gained insight on what users with a limited data plan actually look for. This would really help our project decisions to design the app so the user’s needs are met. I believe that all our reviews of other systems combined can help us decide what to do.

Recommendations toImprove System

I don’t really have any recommendations the system because it displays everything I want it to display. A minor improvement would be to use a color spectrum to display the graphs so that the user knows how “intense” each bar is.

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Judul: Android Application Review - Onavo
Ditulis oleh Unknown
Rating Blog 5 dari 5

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