GMail (DEMO project) Project

Item categories: 

GMail web|interactive GMail web interface
Help|GMail help and documentation

Description: 

The purpose of this project would be to evaluate an redesign the GMail interface.

NOTE: This a public fake project to show the features of UX manager; feel free to browse it. You can create your own projects if you want to try the full application.

Visibility: 

Public - accessible to all site users

Resources

GMail web (interactive GMail web interface)

Help (GMail help and documentation)

manager

  • UXmanager
  • UCDmanager2

member (read-only)

  • user1

member

  • jordisan

UX techniques

Latest changes

Pages

All project documents

Abstract use case

Check incoming email

The user checks if he/she has received new messages.

Check incoming email (web interface)
Log-in

Log in the system

Final user

Greg

Uses GMail daily (from web and mobile phone) to check his personal email

Lisa

She is developing a mail client for GMail.

Issue

Buttons are not obvious; non-standard icons

The new GMail interface includes icons in action buttons instead of old text labels; not a good decision from a usability point of view.

Buttons while composing a new message

While writing a new email, the button 'COMPOSE' is the most visible and seems the most important call-to-action (which should be 'Send').

Login: 'Stay signed in' option not easily understood

Some users don't understand what that option means.

Non-valid HTML

Source code does not pass HTML validation.

Some localized URLs don't work

Localized URLs (for ex.: www.gmail.es) don't redirect to GMail.

Persona

Lisa

She wants to be in contact with all her friends, without losing any message.

She had an email account from another provider, but was very annoyed about spam.

Project item

Technique applied: abstract use cases

Abstract (essential) use cases

Describe the most important uses of the system.

Technique applied: personas

Personas

Application of technique "personas" to have stereotypical users of the system.

Technique applied: user roles

User roles

Define different user roles that may use this application

Technique applied: accessibility eval.

Technique applied: usability heuristic eval.

Quick heuristic review

Example of a heuristic evaluation

Technique applied: usability thinking aloud

Usability thinking-aloud user testing (iter. 1)

Quick check of the usability of the web interface with some users.

Usability thinking-aloud user testing (iter. 2)

Usability-test task

0. Open GMail page

Check which browser chooses and how does he/she open GMail page

1. Log-in

See whether:

  • the user uses mouse or keyboard navigation
  • the user understands and/or uses the "stay signed in" checkbox.

Usability-test task execution

task: 0 | user: developer 1 | completed: yes

No problems.

User uses Firefox; searches 'gmail'; click in the first link.

task: 0 | user: webmail user 1 | completed: no
task: 0 | user: webmail user 1 | completed: partially

Tries to open GMail in his own language: http://www.gmail.es/ ; it doesn't work. He thinks there's some problem in the Internet connection.

Finally he writes http://www.gmail.com and gets to the GMail page.

task: 1 | user: Greg | completed: partially

He logs in, but he says he doesn't understand the "remember" checkbox.

User role

developer

Uses GMail API

mail client user

Uses GMail through a IMAP/POP3 client.

mail user

Uses GMail to read his/her personal mail.

mobile user

Uses GMail from a mobile device

web interface user

Uses GMail through the web interface

Created by UCDmanager2 on Fri, 2012-02-24 00:38

Updated by UXmanager on Sun, 2018-02-11 21:27

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