Cd-rom evaluations

Yesterday we evaluated some cd-roms and dvds. This was a good exercise at using the 10 Jakob Nielson's Heuristics to evaluate each one.

The 10 Heuristics are:
Match between system and the real world -
Looking out for how well the design, words and icons are similar to what a user would be familiar with in the real world i.e. no jargon.
Visibility of system status -
Is there any indication e.g. on a flash site of the percentage download, or feedback to tell the user where and what is happening on a site - such as buttons lighting up with the mouse rolls-over.
User control and freedom -
How well the site is structured with navigation - i.e. is it easy for the user to go forwards and backwards in one step, and also get back to the main menu.
Error prevention -
Have there been steps taken to prevent errors from happening and give warnings to users to stop them doing something that will cause an error.
Recognition rather than recall -
Does a site/cd rom etc have a simple and consistent way of navigating around it and methods, so that the user quickly recognises and remembers what to do , or is it more complex and they will have re-read and understand what to do.
Aesthetic and minimalist design -
The site should have a good looking and minimalist design, with relevant words because every word that isn't relevant will compete with the ones that do.
Flexibility and efficiency of use -
This includes looking for accelerators - things that help the advanced user to skip steps and e.g. get back to home by clicking on an icon.
Helps users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors -
Error messages that have no codes and help the user in plain language to understand and recover from the error.
Help and documentation -
If needed, it should be clear, easy to follow and the file not too large.
Consistency and Standards -
Navigation, fonts, colours, buttons, and symbols should mean the same thing throughout the site/cd-rom or dvd.

We tested 5 different packages -
Go for Gold (an interactive cd-rom with games and learning related to the Manchester 2000 Commonwealth Games). This wasn't very good as it had horrible graphics developed with Director, the games weren't very engaging and the layout was confusing.
Music dvd - this was a clean, great graphics layout, with aesthetic design. The navigation was good, and its only flaw was some of the font sizes were abit small.
Being John Malkovich dvd - The design of the menu was good, drawing themes from the film. However, the information icon lead to a link that wasn't very helpful as it just described what all the different icons meant, which we later discovered wasn't constistently used throughout the links. Also, there was little in the way of accelerators and the chapter selection was limited as you have to use the arrows.
Learning Italian cd-rom - this wasn't great as the first cd didn't work at all on the pc. The kids version did, and some of the games were effective learning tools, but there wasn't much feedback on the buttons, and the layout was abit confusing.
Eye Toy PS2 game - this was an excellent game. Once we had grasped the navigation around the menus using the camera almost 'touch screen effect'. The help animated file was excellent and very clear, and the games were engaging.

Overall, I thought that this was a good exercise to do, to get used to evaluating games, dvds etc, and understanding where Heuristics play a part in planning.