Medium Heuristic-Nkem Oyaghire UX Researcher

Medium— a heuristic evaluation case study

Background

Medium is a digital publishing platform that gives amateur and professional writers and publications the chance to either tell stories or publish articles on a range of topics. Writers and the owners of publications are not the only users of Medium. People who want to consume the articles- and can be referred to as the readers, also fall into its category of users.

Role: UX Researcher
Duration: 3 days
Tools: Canva
Methods: Heuristic Analysis and Secondary research

Objective

The goal of this exercise was to highlight Usability issues with the Medium App

For this exercise, I chose to use the Nielsen Heuristics to see where the design of the fails to comply with the said Heuristics. I did this because of the limited time frame for the project.

In the image are the Heuristics in question.

For this test, certain tasks were performed on the Medium app to see where there are violations of the said Heuristics.

Each violation was assessed using the following severity scale:

A cosmetic problem only with no impact on Usability- Severity 1
A minor usability problem that can be easily fixed- Severity 2
A major usability problem that is important to fix, and should be given high priority- Severity 3
A Usability catastrophe that impedes usability- Severity 4

Heuristic Analysis Findings

Task 1: Select Topics you are interested in

Heuristic Violated: Match between system and the real world; making information appear in a natural and logical order

Severity Level: Severity 1

On the Medium app, users have to select topics they are interested in from more than 30 topics. However, these topics are not arranged in the most logical order which is alphabetical, making it harder to read through the entire list.

Recommendation: The list of topics should be arranged logically and in this case, in alphabetical order.

Task 2: Write an article

Heuristic Violated: Consistency and Standards

Severity Level: Severity 4

Medium exists as a digital publishing tool and, if users are unable to create a post or edit previous posts from the mobile app then the app has failed in making it possible for them to complete a primary task. The task of editing and posting is one that they can complete on the website, being unable to do this on the app goes against the law of Consistency and Standards, particularly Internal Consistency- as they can perform this task on the website and not on the app.

Recommendation: Amend the UI of the app to match that of the Website so that people without access to the website can use the key service of Medium.

Task 3: Remove an article from bookmarks

Heuristic Violated: User control and freedom; support undo and re-do

Severity Level: Severity 2

After a user bookmarks an article from the homepage, clicking on the bookmark icon does not take the article out of the bookmarks. To undo this action the user is required to go to their Reading List.
This violates the 3rd heuristic of User control and freedom, which states that users should be able to “leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue.”

Recommendation: When a user clicks on the bookmark icon after the article has been added to a reading list, the article should be taken out of the bookmarks.

Task 4: Follow a writer from the notifications

Heuristic Violated 1: Consistency and Standards; Internal Consistency

Heuristic Violated 2: Visibility of system status; keep users informed about what is going on.

Severity Level: Severity 1

This task violates 2 Heuristics and but because the task of following another user from the notifications is not key to the usage of Medium, the severity scale for all three violations is Severity 1.

When you get a new follower, the app prompts you to follow them but uses a plus sign that can only be guessed to mean follow back, violating the heuristic of following conventions in other aspects of the app as seen in the images below where users can follow other people by clicking on a button that says "Follow"

Also, when a user clicks on the plus sign, they are not informed of what action has been performed. Leaving the user guessing what may have happened.

Recommendation: The plus sign should be changed to a button that says “Follow” as seen in the other image. Doing this also fixes the problem of users not knowing what has happened when they click the plus button as it immediately changes to “Following”

Secondary Research Findings

Users are unable to listen to articles like they can on the website. The playstore reviews revealed that users who had experience with using the Medium website were seeking ways to listen to articles as they could on the web version of the app
Users have no control over the articles that are recommended to them on the For You Page. Medium can be likened to a marketplace of ideas where discussions happen via articles. The For You page on the mobile app is a curated segment of articles that Medium thinks you would enjoy. There are currently no ways to pick or select the topics you are interested in seeing on your For You page.
Users cannot read bookmarked/saved articles offline. From the secondary research, it was clear that users desired to have the ability to access articles they had saved or bookmarked when they did not have access to internet connection

Take-Aways

This was the first time I had conducted a Heuristic analysis here are the learnings I gained from this experience:

Better planning: This was the first time I had done a Heuristic analysis, I should have planned my time better to allow me conduct the study more efficiently, as I almost missed my deadline.
Further Research: Due to the nature of project-a task for a job application, I did not have the leeway to do further research that would have given more insights into the experience of the users of the Medium mobile app.