A Heuristic Evaluation of the Amazon Fire Stick
I was sitting in my living room engaging in a Netflix movie when I remembered that my TV is just a regular old TV. However, with my Amazon fire stick, it now behaves as though it was a Smart TV. This led me to a realization: television sets have come a long way since the late 1920s. From the box set to flat panel to today’s Smart TVs, the way in which we view media has dramatically changed. Smart TVs have made it so that users can now do what they could originally only do on a laptop/cellular device. It allows them to access streaming platforms, surf the web, and even hold video conferences. And with the Amazon Fire Stick, you can now turn any TV into a Smart one. These devices have made it so that television is no longer just hooking up a cable box and watching a finite number of channels; there are loads of things to do with the potential to add more as these devices advance. I will be performing a heuristic evaluation on the Amazon Fire Stick using Jakob Nielsen’s list of Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. But first…
What is a Smart TV and How does it Work?
In technical terms, Smart TVs are a technological convergence of computers, televisions, and digital media players. Imagine your smartphone, your tablet, or your laptop; how are you able to access the Internet on any of those devices? By connecting to a broadband router and Ethernet or WiFi network. The same goes for a Smart TV; the only way to do anything on it is to first connect to the Internet. They are equipped with their own preloaded operating system as well a selection of built-in programs or apps that a user can add to or remove, like a smartphone.
How did the Amazon Fire Stick come to be?
The Amazon Fire Stick was launched in November 2014 and has released three updated versions ever since (Fire Stick 4K, Fire Stick Lite, and Fire Stick 3rd Generation). Its purpose is to turn almost any ordinary TV into a Smart one. Depending on the generation, the stick comes as a small USB flash drive that you plug into your TV’s HDMI port. While it looks small, it is packed with a full-featured streaming player. With the Fire Stick, your TV can do the same things a Smart TV can.
Visibility of System Status
The design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time.
The way the Firestick can show the user what’s going on is through the Bluetooth remote itself. The earliest remote consists of 7 buttons in total: power, navigation, and general TV controls (home/menu/rewind). With the simplicity of these buttons, the user can navigate through the on-screen features of the Firestick.
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
While the buttons on the remote itself are simple, what also makes it easy is the icons (Figure 2). Each icon on the remote, from the home button to the fast forward button, gives the user a clear indication of what it does. It’s also helpful that there are no words on the remote because then there would have to be translations for different languages.
User control and freedom
Users often perform actions by mistake. They need a clear marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted action without having to go through an extended process.
In addition to the remote features, it leaves little possibility for the user to be confused. An action that was done on accident can be canceled by clicking the back button and returning to the previous screen or hitting the home button and returning to the opening screen. (Figure 2)
Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform and industry standards.
Both the remote and on-screen features don’t involve a lot of vocabulary. It gets right to the point of showing you the list of programs you have available to select from and how to get there using the remote.
Error prevention
Good error messages are important, but the best designs carefully prevent problems from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
People make mistakes all the time; they delete files they shouldn’t have, they press buttons out of curiosity, or they somehow navigate to a point where they’re about to erase all data. Luckily, the Amazon Fire Stick does provide confirmation messages whenever users are about to execute a major action.
As seen in Figure 3, this is an example of a confirmation message. The user is about to reset their firestick to the factory default settings, which will mean that everything, the account they’ve signed into and the apps that they have, will all be deleted. If a user ended up here by mistake, the message gives them a choice to cancel the request.
Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the interface to another. Information required to use the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed.
Regardless of the generation, the home screen of the firestick contains a menu bar at the top that lists out all of the different sections within and it does not go away as the user navigates through each of them.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Shortcuts — hidden from novice users — may speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the design can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
The Bluetooth remote has a shortcut that allows users to quickly navigate through some of the key features, such as Sleep, Settings, Apps, and Mirroring. All a user would have to do is simply press and hold the Home button and a pop-up menu appears on the screen.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Interfaces should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in an interface competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
The firestick remote is small and has very few buttons and that contributes to its straightforward design (Figure 2). By doing this, users don’t exactly have to look at the remote to see what they’re pressing or accidentally press something they don’t want (compare this to TV remotes from back when you were young, with all their buttons).
The on-screen features themselves are easy to learn. There are simply rows of apps and channels for the user to select from. Each app has its name, company logo, and color displayed on it so the user knows what it is (i.e. the Netflix app has a white background with the red word “Netflix” on it that we’re all used to).
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no error codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
There are all kinds of errors that can occur: human errors, network errors, etc. The way that the firestick handles it is by identifying the problem and giving the user a solution. For instance, when there is a network error, the firestick fails to load the home screen and tells the user to check their internet connection followed by a button that takes the user to their network settings to try and reconnect.
Help and documentation
It’s best if the system doesn’t need any additional explanation. However, it may be necessary to provide documentation to help users understand how to complete their tasks.
In the settings portion of the firestick, Amazon included a help section where users are presented with a list of common topics where things have gone wrong before. If the user does not see the topic they need, there is also a section where they can contact Amazon via email or a customer service line for more information.
The Amazon Fire Stick was created to compete with Roku TV, which at the time was also very popular. The key difference between the two is that the firestick allows users to connect to their other Alexa devices, but the device itself is Bluetooth-enabled so users can communicate what they want to see, unlike the Roku. That and Amazon Fire Sticks are also more affordable so keep that in mind when you’re looking for which to buy. Happy streaming!
