Heuristic 6: Recognition rather than Recall
The Home screen does not feature a “continue watching” section, forcing the user to search through hundreds of shows and movies to find what the user is looking for. This is in violation of Heuristic 6 because it forces the user to recall information related to their target show in order to continue watching at a later date.
Heuristic 7: Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
The Home screen does not feature a way to easily sort through genres. Instead of a convenient list or drop-down menu, the user is forced to scroll through row after row of shows and movies that do not fit their preferences in order to find a single genre. This violates Heuristic 7 by slowing down the user’s navigation of the app and making the experience less efficient.
Heuristic 1: Visibility of System Status
The main navigation menu of the app does not display the page that the user is currently on. This leads to redundancy, as the user will occasionally unwittingly reload the page they were already viewing.
Heuristic 7: Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
The button to assign filters to a search does not have any sort of label and very closely resembles the button for the main navigation tab for the entire app. If the user wanted to filter their search results, they may have to resort to a “trial and error” method of button pressing, which slows down the user.
Heuristic 4: Consistency and Standards
When pressed, the button used to filter search results is labeled “refine”. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this choice of a label, it is a word that the general public may not be as familiar with as they would be if the tab were labeled “filter” or “advanced search”. This could result in confusion, thereby limiting usability of the search functions.
User Flows
The base app user flow for the most important actions looks something like this:
It isn’t overly complicated by any stretch of the imagination, but there are things that could be changed to conform better to the 10 heuristics of design. The following changes will be featured in the same order as the issues I highlighted previously.
A “Previously Watched” Section
This is a small change, simply an addition to what the home page already features. The addition of a “continue watching” section improves the user’s experience upon entering the app, allowing them to quickly jump back into their series without wasting time searching for it.
Home Screen Genre Sorting
This change would allow the user to filter shows simply, without having to first search for a specific movie or show, improving the speed at which the user can begin viewing what they want.
Visibility of System Status
This change would not be adding anything, but rather removing a redundant button to save the user time and brain power. There is no need for the menu of each page to allow the user to travel to that same page. Simply removing the current page as an option would increase the speed at which the user can navigate the app.
Changing the “Filter” Button
Rather than modifying how a page functions this modification is intended to improve the user’s efficiency. By replacing the three-lined button (used to denote “refine the search”) with a clearly marked “Advanced Search” button, the user will more easily recognize how to filter their search results, allowing the user to more quickly find what they are looking for.
Changing the Title of the “Refine” Tab
This is another minor edit. The term “refine”, which is currently used to label the filter search results tab is not one that all users will recognize. “Refine” is not nearly as frequently used for this purpose as other words or terms are, and this has the potential to confuse the user, particularly if the user is not a native English speaker. Changing the title of this tab to something that is seen more frequently can help alleviate the risk of confusion.
redesign 1
This redesign did not take much work, as my biggest issue with the app is easily corrected by adding a category to the “Home” screen that would allow the user to continue watching shows or movies, rather than having to search the whole app. I attempted to use the same typeface that Amazon used originally, drawing from Amazon’s design guidelines. In practice, all the typefaces would be the same as the original.
redesign 2
The second redesign aims to make finding new shows or movies easier by adding a genre filter to the home screen. This tab was already present in the search results page, so I decided to reuse that tab to maintain consistency. I added the button to access the filter tab into the light blue strip because I wanted the button to be clear and easily located while not adding any extra weight to the page. My choice of filler genres in the tab would be replaced by genres fitting the user’s watch history, with less watched genres moving towards the bottom of the list.
redesign 3
This redesign is a solution to the app’s lack of visibility of system status. I thought it was less than ideal to have the page you are currently viewing not be highlighted in any way and still be clickable. I opted to use the same method of visibility as the tabs at the top of the “Home” page in an effort to remain consistent. While it isn’t possible to see what the buttons do in screenshots, the highlighted button would no longer be clickable, removing redundant reloading.
redesign 4
Another simple change, this redesign removes some risk of confusion with the search filter function, as well as making the navigation bar appear more symmetrical. I chose to apply the term “filter” rather than anything else because it is the most instantly recognizable, fit best in that place, and best describes the function it serves.
redesign 5
This redesign is a follow up to the #4. The tab used to filter a search was titled “refine” which, while accurate, is not a term that is instantly recognized by most. I changed it to “filter results” so as the remain consistent with the button that had to be pressed to activate this tab. By using “filter” again, it makes the tab feel connected to the button it is accessed by.