Heuristic evaluation for Local News Station apps

Conduct a comprehensive review of the mobile web, iOS, and Android apps of the Local News Stations

📌 PROJECT SCOPE

Client: Sinclair Broadcast

Timeframe: 2-4 weeks
My Role: UX Researcher
Methods: Cognitive Walkthrough, Design Review, Usability testing
Tools: Dscout, Figma

Project Overview

🚀 CLIENT KICKOFF

The UX manager wanted to document issues with the current app as no formal evaluation had been completed in the 2 years since the research team was developed.

🔎 OBJECTIVES

Evaluate the news sites and apps utilizing the 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design
Bring forward top recommendations that could be immediately actionable by design and/or dev.

✏️ NOTES

Limited screens and information are disclosed for confidentiality reasons. Please inquire if you have further questions.

📋 Heuristic Evaluation

I evaluated the mobile app (iOS and Android) and my research partner evaluated mobile web. We then collaborated by noting overlapping issues identified and discussed severity levels together.

Issues were documented in Figma presentation with screenshots of the page or videos when an interaction needed to be clearly explained.
10 issues were identified as easy wins that could be brought to dev.

Accessibility

During the Heuristic, a handful of accessibility issues were identified.

I completed a color contrast check of different elements and documented them for the design team.
I also created a resource for designers highlighting which plugins are available for doing color contrast checks and ensuring this is something done every time a design choice is made.

Image of a deck outlining instances of low color contrast. Issue is identified on the left using UX heuristics and a screenshot of the issues is on the right with labels for identifying each instances.

💭 Reflection

Industry Takeaways

After a certain age of a product, it is easy for teams to accept certain aspects as “how it works” rather than issues to address. We wanted to find small but impactful items to bring to dev that could improve the product, but also provide momentum for more attention to be given to the product.

Personal Takeaways

Prioritizing the issues into ~10 items to handoff at one time will help increase the odds that work will get done. I think many researchers have an internal desire to find as many issues as they can, but forget this can be overwhelming and cause no issue to be addressed. I’ve worked a lot on strengthening the skill of distilling the vast number of issues into a small, manageable amount that dev and/or design are more willing to tackle. This lowers the barrier of entry for work on the product and ensures something rather than nothing gets done.