A Heuristic Review of the Samsung Smart Refrigerator
According to Nielsen Norman Group, a heuristic review “involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles.” These reviews are best done in groups, since it can be hard for a single person to identify every single possible usability issue with a given interface. I collaborated with a group of other designers to review Samsung’s Smart Refrigerator and brainstorm alternative improvements to its usability. I will discuss below how this smart fridge compared against a number of heuristics we tested it against.
Heuristic Review
Match Mental Modal: the design should match the user’s expectations in terms of language and context. Content should be listed in a logical order.
The Samsung Fridge does a fantastic job with this. Customers can expect a similar interface to other Samsung products. The familiar interface makes pairing with a Samsung device very easy. However, if the user isn’t a native android user, they may have a hard time navigating the interface.
Minimized Perceived Complexity: the interface should not contain excess irrelevant information.
One positive for Samsung is Bixby, Samsung’s AI system. Bixby helps to reduce complexity with the interface by helping users find what they’re looking for with voice commands.
However, the navigation throughout multiple interfaces can get confusing. There are two home screens as well as a “sleep screen” that only shows the date and time. All of these pages show different items, but having them be labeled as home screens is redundant and creates unnecessary complexity.
Use of Consistent Forms, Words and Actions: users should expect certain words found in multiple places to mean the same thing. Labels should match industry conventions.
Samsung does this well, since the interface is congruent across all Samsung devices. Users can expect the same interactions and words with this fridge as they do with other Samsung devices.
Account For User and Environmental Constraints
The ability to link with a mobile device allows the user to control or update the fridge from other locations. The large screen provides high quality readability.
Anticipate Needs
One of the greatest features of this fridge, in my opinion, is that it takes a picture of the fridge each time it opens. That’s something that is so beneficial if a user isn’t at home and needs to know what they have in their fridge. I know I’m not the only one who has purchased something at the grocery store only to come home and realize I already had it.
Not only does the fridge take pictures, there is a tagging feature that allows the user to enter in their food items so they can see what they have in a list form instead of as an image. While I think this is useful, the user has to manually enter in each item, which could take time they don’t have, so I thought that this feature was something that Samsung could improve upon.
Prevent Errors and Provide Graceful Recovery:
The temperatures can be changed manually or can be preset. There are notifications when the water filter needs to be replaced, maintaining the safety of the user, which is important for a decide that contains items that could rot or be bad for consumption. If the user decides to use the tagging feature, the fridge will also notify the user when a certain item has expired, or will expire soon.
Strive For Appropriate and Minimal Aesthetics
The color palette isn’t too bright or overwhelming and there are many uses of color to notify the user of certain functionalities or warnings. However, the overall aesthetics aren’t minimal. With the multiple homepages, and seemingly limitless capacity to add widgets to any page, the visual aesthetic is cluttered and not appealing to look at.
Our Solution
My group wanted to focus on improving the tagging feature since we felt that it was the most lacking, and would hugely improve usability for users. Our solution to manually having to enter items into the interface would be to create a scanner type functionality where the user can scan or take a picture of their item using the fridge’s camera before putting it in the fridge. Then, the Fridge would pull the information off the image, and create a tag for it. I think by automating the tagging system, the feature will be used more often and could become a great help to users.
Erin Hancock is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Web & App Development. The following article relates to Heuristic Review Deliverable Project in the DGM 1240 Course and representative of the skills learned.
