Heuristic Evaluation of Medium

Published in

UX Planet

4 min readDec 19, 2022

Since you’re reading this on Medium, I don’t need need to explain what this website is. Medium has been going through a redesign phase for quite some time now. As a regular user of Medium, I have seen the user interface changes on this website throughout the past couple of years. In Nov 2022, I conducted a heuristic evaluation of Medium using Jakob Neilsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. I found some positive and negative points and proposed solutions for those negative ones. This article outlines all of this.

Note: This is not an exhaustive evaluation. I focused only on the major screens that are related to content consumption and exploration.

Legend indicating that green lines are for heuristic adherence, red lines are for heuristic violations, and blue lines are for suggested improvements

#1 Visibility of system status

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to depict that publication name is correctly shown, author’s name and picture is correctly shown, and the number of claps is correctly shown

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium page to depict that total number of claps are shown but number of claps provided by each user are not shown

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium page to suggest improvement that number of claps should be visible below each user’s name

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium homepage to depict that number of notifications are clearly indicated with the bell icon

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium notifications page to depict that the latest unread notification is highlighted with a green vertical line

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium search results page to depict clear indication of search results and search term, clear indication of category of search result

#2 Match between system and the real world

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium homepage to depict that icons make use of metaphors that connect with the real world but some icons are not familiar because they are confusing, tags look clickable because of affordances derived from the real world, and language used in interface elements is familiar to users from the real world

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium homepage to suggest improvement that the icons in the navbar should be accompanied by text label

#3 User control and freedom

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to depict the lack of breadcrumbs

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to suggest improvement that breadcrumbs should be visible at the top of the page

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to depict the lack of clear options to change the number of claps

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to suggest improvement that plus and minus icons should be there along with the number of claps

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to depict the user control over following and unfollowing an author via follow/unfollow button

#4 Consistency and standards

Screenshots depicting the inconsistency in navbar/header on Medium across two pages — navbar is on left on homepage and header is on top on stats page

Screenshots suggesting improvement that the navbar/header should be consistent across all screens and pages on Medium — i.e. on the left

Screenshots depicting the inconsistency in content and organization on Medium across two pages — homepage vs article page

Screenshots suggesting improvement that the content and organization should be logical and consistent across pages — homepage and article page

Annotations on the screenshots of two Medium pages to depict the consistency in primary CTA, and inconsistency in secondary CTA

Annotations on the screenshots of two Medium pages to suggest improvement that the secondary CTA should be consistent in terms of its appearance across pages

#5 Error prevention

#6 Recognition rather than recall

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to call out that the prominent actions are displayed upfront for easy recognition

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium homepage to call out that the menu options and categories are visible upfront for easy recognition

#7 Flexibility and efficiency of use

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium page to call out the lists and bookmarks feature

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium page to call out the recommendations feature

#8 Aesthetic and minimalist design

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium homepage to depict that important elements and information are given visual prominence, but minimalist design in icons affects usability

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium article page to depict that crucial information is given its due importance

#9 Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium 404 page to depict that clear information is provided about the error, and ways to move forward are clearly visible

#10 Help and documentation

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium page to depict that help can be accessed via a link in the footer, but the link is difficult to find due to its low visibility

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium page to suggest improvement that the help icon should be placed in navbar

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium help page to depict that search bar is available, and categories are available for easy access

Annotations on the screenshot of Medium help page to depict that concise and easy to follow instructions are available

In a nutshell, Medium is a well designed website and it fairs well against most heuristics. However, there is always some scope for improvement and specific points are highlighted by this heuristic evaluation.