The Heuristic Evaluation for the websites www.omg.yahoo.com
and www.accesshollywood.com.
Both websites are dedicated to celebrity news, gossips, photographs. I found OMG.Yahoo.com being very well-designed and organized website, which follows many heuristic principles. At the same time www.accesshollywood.com seems to be poorly designed and quite confusing. Visibility of system status
Is status feedback provided continuously (eg progress indicators or messages)?
www.omg.yahoo.com continuously provides the status feedback. The home page is structured the way that the main links are the photos with the headline. On rollover the user can see the button which indicates if the link is an article ("read"), the photos ("photos") or the videos. The user has a choice to read the full article ("read more") or go back to the beginning ("thanks, I'm done"), to watch the video or to see the photos. If the user has already seen the photos there is a check mark which indicates that.
There is a greeting message in the upper right corner which greets the user or offer to sign in.
www.accesshollywood.com also provides the opportunity to "read more" for each article too, but does not indicate if the user has already visited the link. The site does not allow to create a profile or at least it's very hard to notice due to the unstructured information.
Match between system and real world
Both websites use phrases, terminology and concepts familiar to the user. The information on OMG.yahoo.com is presented in a simple, natural and logical order, though www.accesshollywood.com is definitely lacking of simplicity and the logic is very hard to follow.
User control and freedom
www.omg.yahoo.com allows users to easily go back to the home page. The logo functions as a link to the home page and the main navigation is always located at the same place. Also the user can look through the related articles, photos or videos which are located on the right side of the current page, have large thumbnails and easy to notice. The user is able to read and leave the comments. The user can print the photo, share the info on Facebook, hide/show comments, or report abuse.
www.accesshollywood.com lacks of all these functions, there is no log in. The logo which is located at the top left corner DOES NOT provide the link to the home page! The user does not have any control over the advertisement which starts automatically almost on every page.
Consistency and standards
The use of terminology, controls, graphics and menus consistent throughout both of the websites. Though there is a consistent look and feel to the www.accesshollywood.com interface, the site looks very busy and overloaded with the information. Every time the user is looking through the photos in the photo gallery, the whole page is reloading. Besides extra loading time, it looks very unattractive, because they can see the background gradient image appearing and disappearing.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Both websites do not allow for a range of user expertise. They seem to have the same level of difficulty for all users.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
OMG.Yahoo.com has very simple, intuitive and pleasing design. It contains great amount of information but it's very well organized, and presented in a very simple way. The website free from irrelevant, unnecessary and distracting information. The icons are clear, buttons labeled, large and is the use of graphic controls is obvious.
www.accesshollywood.com is quite opposite. It's full of information, irrelevant images, advertising and constantly moving animation, what is extremely distracting. It's very difficult to focus on anything specific. It makes the user very overwhelmed.
Help users recover from errors
I did not find any error messages. Both sites have avoided errors and error messages.
Help and documentation
There are links to the documentation and help on the bottom of the page for both websites.
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