Project Overview

 

This document consists of a complete redesign and heuristic evaluation of Figma, a web-based application used for collaborative interface design. The entire process is divided into five main stages, which are understanding product goals and its market, understanding users, identifying product’s usability issues, designing recommended fixes, and applying heuristic evaluation.

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During the understanding product goals and its market phase, our team conducted competitor analysis to understand what Figma is about and where it stands on the market. Understanding the product allowed us to prepare for the next phase, which is understanding our users. During this stage, we conducted user interviews and surveys to figure out user needs as well as identify the target population. After we gathered useful data about users, we recruited potential users to perform usability tests and our team conducted the cognitive walkthrough.

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Once we completed our usability evaluations, we identified five main usability issues:

• Icons are unintuitive

• Design menu lacks functionalities

• Functionalities are hidden

• Exporting files is confusing

• Lack of common symbols and templates

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In order to redesign the usability issues, our team created sketches, wireframes, and mockups. The last stage of our project is performing heuristic evaluation on our redesign of Figma to see if further improvements can be made. The heuristic evaluation method is based on 10 Usability Heuristics provided by Jakob Nielsen. Out of the 10 heuristics, the evaluation applies 7 heuristics that are relevant with our system. Below is the list of heuristics used in both individual evaluation and team evaluation.

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1. Visibility of system status

2. Match between system and the real world

3. User control and freedom

4. Consistency and standards

5. Recognition rather than recall

6. Aesthetic and minimalist design

7. Help and documentation

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