Part A::: Choose a common office application such as Microsoft Word or Excel. Within that application, identify a task or feature that you find confusing or counter intuitive. In your initial post, do the following:

• Identify the software application and the specific task or feature you find confusing.
• Provide a brief analysis of the interface and design based on HCI guidelines.
• Explain how you would redesign the application to make the particular task or feature more user friendly.

Part B::: In response to your peers, constructively critique their recommendations. You may provide additional suggestions for the task or feature as well.

Peer 1 Post: When I was driving for UBER full time I would use numbers app on my I pad to keep track of my business finances. But I found it confusing and a bit difficult to add columns together for automated totals which involved equations to set up the spread sheet. Even on the mac book it found it confusing. If maybe their was If we could simplify the process it would be great also after about a years worth of data from income outgoing money the spreadsheet would crash. I would redesign the app to be able to add rows and columns easier by adding a button function that makes the functions and all you have to do is select the rows or/and columns . Maybe its just me but I found learning the different equations a bit hard not having a strong background in the app. Another program(least common) I use Heavily is Ableton live. It is an audio editing and recording soft ware but I found it lacks a real useful tool the ability to clean audio and remove low background noise from recordings for a cleaner tracks.

Peer 2 Post: A common office application I use is Microsoft Visio. Visio allows you to create flowcharts, diagrams, and map out any sort of hierarchy you might be working with using related shapes and images to help paint the picture. When deciding on a shape to use, Visio has a search feature you can use to search for various shapes from their own database and other third party applications. I’ve noticed a lot of the time, the search feature won’t find results very easily based on my search. For example, I could search something as simple as, “Question Mark” and get a bunch of related shapes but not just a simple question mark, which is a pretty common shape. I believe using a third party application for a lot of their shapes can cause discrepancies, thus making searching shapes difficult and cumbersome. If I were to redesign this to make the search functionality more user friendly, I would make a few changes. First, I would try to stray away from using a third party for shapes. I would also provide more shapes especially for key functionalities. Lastly, I would make sure the provided shapes are all up to date. If you search for a simple term like “Server” you get an old looking terminal and other related items. This could work but working in the modern world this is outdated especially if using Visio to present to co workers. In conclusion, Visio is for the most part user friendly in my opinion, but I could identify a few changes to make the process of creating diagrams etc. more user-friendly.