UI UX Blog

Heuristic Analysis - Password Reset Page

Heuristic Analysis is the evaluation of user interface design in order to find out common usability issues and is a quickest ways of finding out usability problems and fixing them. Any skilled UI/UX Designer can help you perform Heuristic Analysis and eliminate useability issues before. Heuristic Analysis can be performed at any stage but it would be most beneficial if you perform this analysis on your existing designs before subjecting them touseability testing. Doing so will help you find deeper useability issues instead of rediscovering what is already known.

Following is an example taken from a popular recruitment site. In order to save the site from any criticism, I have blurred their identity and some of the email IDs listed on the page.

1 - Selected Home menu suggests as if this is the homepage of website, while this is a sub page of User Accounts. The Carrier Advice link here is out of context and does not align with user goals of this particular stage.

2 - Sign In and Sign Up links do not justify their existance as this page is displayed when somebody is trying to retrieve his lost password. That means he is already a member, thus would not require to signup again. He cannot use Sign In button at this stage either because the password is not working. So both these link fail to justify their reason to exist.

3 - "Create Your New Password" does not describe function of this page acurately.  This needs to be changed to something like "Reset your password". In point No. 7, caption of the "Submit" button is accurate but again the caption of "action" button does not go well with the heading of the page.

4 - This is an important piece of information and says

"Re-send temporary password (Link)

! Please note the temporary Password may be in your 'junk' or 'spam' email folder

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT YOUR EMAIL SPAM FILTERS
Email spam filter may prevent you from receiving certain emails. To ensure your emails get to you, please add **** (email address) to your 'Safe List" or "Approved List" of email senders."

This important note should be displayed on the "Forgot Password" page where user mentions his email account to confirm his identity and retrieve new/temporary password. Once user has reached on "Reset Password Page" and has received "Temporary Password", it is a paradox to presume that user could have miss that email.

5 - This needs to be written in the "Reset Password Email" which is sent to account holder. If there exists an automated process to reset password which requires a clicking on the page, that option needs to be placed above "Temporary Password" option. Also in the presence of "click link to reset password" option, temporary password option does not need to exist at all. If temporary password option is secure and is better in terms of security, "click link to reset password" option doesn't need to exist.

6 - "Incorrect Value for New Password" is an error which appears if new password doesn't match the expected criteria. Howerver the criteria is dislocated and is written underneath the password field in a very small font. If the user enters a  new password and this error is generated, it would becomes frustrating for the user as he wouldn't know what is the accepteable criteria and why is entered password inappropriate.

7 - Caption for "Reset Password" is correct but not in harmoney with the page heading. Also Cancel button doesn't have any reason to exist as this is an important step without completing which, the user wouldn't be able to access his account.

8 - A two column template is used to design this page. If there was no content for the right column, one column template should have been used instead.

 Reseting/retrieval of a forgotton password is a common use-case and many users go through this procedure irrespective of features/services offered by the main application. A simple Heuristic Analysis can help the site fix these issues and  gain better usability rating, hence a higher level of satisfaction from its users.