In their study ‘Exploring the Facebook: A New Approach to Usability’ Jennefer Hart, Charlene Ridley, Faisal Taher, Corina Sas and Alan Dix from Lancaster University England explored the succesfactors behind Facebook by looking at usability and user experience factors.
The results of a heuristic evaluation show that Facebook performs poorly with regards to traditional usability guidelines. Only 2 of the 10 heuristics are adhered to in Facebook, while 4 were rated as having minor problems and 4 rated as having major problems. It has particular problems with consistency and standards, error prevention and recognition rather than recall. In theory, Facebook should not be the success it currently is due to its failure when tested using a traditional usability evaluation method.
When asked 26 participants to rate Facebook’s ease-of-use on a Likert scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “very easy”, 5 being “very difficult”) the majority of participants (85%) stated that it was “very easy” or “easy”. The remaining participants responded that it was “average”. None felt it was “difficult” or “very difficult”.
People use Facebook in a different way than most other websites. “I usually have Facebook open in the background, you know when I’m doing uni work and then every now and then I’ll, like… go and check for updates or just have a look around… do a quiz or something… just as, like, a break from working”. This new form of internet browsing, of ‘hanging around’ on websites contrasts with previous web surfing habits that Jakob Nielsen describes as: “Most people just want to get in, get it and get out”.
It is evident from this study that while Facebook fails in traditional usability evaluation terms it excels in providing many positive user experiences for its vast community of members. As a social web service it not only provides a great deal of social pleasure but provokes curiosity, provides a base for self expression and evokes memories of the past, along with a myriad of emotional and hedonic user experiences. In a system where the user has a specific goal in mind and satisfaction arises from qualities such as ease of use and enhanced productivity then guidelines such as Nielsen’s 10 heuristics are fit for purpose. However, these traditional usability methods do not capture the aspects of users who are looking for fun and pleasure while ‘hanging around’ on the WWW.
Therefore this calls for a more holistic approach, with the need for new design guidelines.
Related posts:
- Guidelines for Describing Usability Problems
- Five things website designers can do to direct user attention
- The Single Usability Metric
There‘s no comment here yet, be the first to comment!