Vanessa Noueider
Vanessa Noueider
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PlayStation App Re-Design

What is it?

A design challenge were we were asked to evaluate the usability of an existing digital 

product by conducting a heuristic evaluation. 

The chosen digital product was the PS App, specifically on Android.


  • Duration: 2 weeks
  • Project type: School Project
  • Role: Research, Wireframing, Presentation Design
  • Team: 2 UX Designers (Ty Kennington and myself)
  • Tools: Figma
  • Method: Heuristic Evaluation

Digital Product Summary

The PlayStation App is a software application for iOS and Android devices developed by PlayStation Mobile Inc.

The app lets you chat with your PlayStation friends, buy games from the PS store and much more.
 

View Full Prototype

Heuristic Evaluation

 

Following the 10 heuristics of design by Nielsen Norman Group, we found that the PlayStation app violated several of these. Most of the violations were cosmetic but we have highlighted a few of major components we wanted to tackle.

Heuristic Violations

Heuristic #4 - Consistency and Standards

Heuristic #7 - Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Heuristic #6 - Recognition Rather Than Recall

  • The use of different icons in the app deviated from what users are familiar with on the actual PlayStation console.
  • The use of black and grey was also not consistent with the colour scheme used in the PlayStation console.

Heuristic #6 - Recognition Rather Than Recall

Heuristic #7 - Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Heuristic #6 - Recognition Rather Than Recall

  • The lack of labels for the bottom footer menu made it unclear what each icon was meant to be. Adding labels would increase accessibility.

Heuristic #7 - Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Heuristic #7 - Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Heuristic #7 - Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

  • It can be difficult to navigate to the user's profile. This setting was only found in the “Play” menu which could potentially be adjusted to be available on the app as a whole instead of a separate page.
  • The user can only search for a game in the search section. Adding the search option in the PS Store would be easier.

Heuristic #8 - Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

Heuristic #9 - Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

Heuristic #7 - Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

  • The design of the app overall feels rather crowded with certain screens containing an excess of information. Having more options and separate screens could help improve the aesthetic and overall usability.

Heuristic #9 - Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

Heuristic #9 - Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

Heuristic #9 - Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

  • Downloading an app is only available for PlayStation 5 users. This would be frustrating for a user of the old system to have this option as it does not function properly.
  • Beginning a download on a PlayStation 5 works as intended, however it lacks a progress bar to inform the user how long until the download finishes.

Heuristic #10 - Help and Documentation

Heuristic #9 - Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

Heuristic #9 - Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

  •  While there is some PlayStation Support, it is not integrated into the app. Adding a chat bot or a FAQ page would help with overall branding and user experience.

User Reviews

We looked at some of the reviews on the Play Store and found some of the users' pain points.

One particular user mentioned that the app design could be improved, especially the curved navigation bar.

The reviews proved that our heuristic evaluation was valid and thus we began working on the changes.

 

Applied Changes

Design Usability Matrix

Design Usability Matrix

Below are the changes that we implemented in our PlayStation App re-design:

  • Apply the PS Console branding to the whole app
  • Simplify the layout
  • Make the bottom navigation bar flat
  • Add more accessibility options to entire app
  • Add an option to collapse the offline friends list
  • Add labels to the relevant icons
  • Include Settings option to entire app

Design Usability Matrix

Design Usability Matrix

Design Usability Matrix

We color-coded the changes to be done based on the usability severity rating and arranged each of the heuristic violations in terms of the effort to fix them vs the impact on usability to the design. 

Heuristic #7:
Flexibility and efficiency of use 

Figma Prototype

Figma Prototype

Design Positives

Just like we highlighted the negatives in the app, we also acknowledge that there are some incredible positives as well: 

  • Push notifications about active downloads follow heuristic #1 visibility of system status. 
  • The ability to see your live friends list as well as seeing your up-do-date game library highlights heuristic #2, match between the system and the real world. 
  •  The prompt screen asking the user if they want to cancel a download or delete a game follows heuristic #5, error prevention

 

Key Learning & Future Thinking

Key Learning

 

While the PS app is very useful and has some great features, it had room for improvement which proves that consistent research helps improve the product.

The heuristic evaluation proved to be valuable when we tried to diagnose the app and discover opportunities for enhancement.



Future Thinking

Some of the features that might be added in the future:

  • Adding a chat-bot to help with user issues
  • Adding an option to download video clips or images to your phone


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