Tag Archives: User testing

Let’s Go App

UX & UIAssistive technology, HTML & CSS, Illustrator, Let's Go, Photoshop, User testing, web design

Let’s Go is an app designed to teach people with intellectual disabilities the necessary skills to travel and live independently. It is an ongoing collaborative project involving IADT and St John of God’s.

For one of my projects I had the opportunity to develop a section of this app. The section I chose to develop was a body language tutorial.

I have included this project in my portfolio for several reasons:

much of my work as self-directed and involved independent critical analysis;
this project demonstrates my web design and development skills, i.e. research, sketching & wireframing and design & development (using the 960 grid, HTML & CSS, Photoshop for content editing and Javascript to implement basic interactivity);
my work was selected to be tested with the intended user group;
I assisted in the user testing which gave me the opportunity to see the next stage in the development process first hand.

Development Process

The Research Stage was challenging due to the lack of assistive technology that exists for this user group. Two examples, however, were useful for guidance and inspiration – Money Counts (a website that teaches money management skills to people with intellectual disabilities) and Pesky gNATs (a game that teaches CBT techniques to children). These applications helped me to realise that images and concrete metaphors would be more helpful to this user group than abstract concepts.

There may be a shortage of technology for the user group, but there is no shortage of academic research. This helped me to:

identify foundation level social skills so that I could pinpoint the areas of body language to focus on and how much detail to give,
identify a need in the user group to increase confidence so that they could become more sociable,
identify the teaching methods that would work best for this user group, i.e. images, prompts and modelling.

The sketching and wireframing stages allowed me to get ideas for the design down on paper and easily refine them. For example, my initial design included a slideshow tutorial about body language with images, voiceover and text – however I reconsidered this after wireframing because I felt that the text might be distracting for the user.

Development and Design built on the skills I had learnt in previous projects. I felt confident in my HTML & CSS skills, so much so that I decided to add Javascript to enable certain features such as audio links and the slideshow. To help me with this I completed an online course in basic Javascript.

Design decisions included keeping to a simple layout so as not to distract the user. I chose to include the slideshow tutorial mentioned already, along with a video to build on the material included in the slideshow, and a game to reinforce learning and allow for user interaction. There was no requirement to pick colours or design a logo and these had already been decided. A resource called Photosymbols was made available which contained images of people with IDs; I used these as much as possible in my design as I felt the user group would more readily identify with them.

User Testing was conducted over two sessions. During each session, four users were observed as they tested various modules of the app. Due to the ethical issues of conducting research with this user group, it was not possible to record the tests. As an alternative, assistant researchers also observed the tests, thereby ensuring accuracy in the data.

My role as one of the assistant researchers was to help some of our participants with their pre-test questionnaires and to record my observations of each person for a specified period of time as they used the app. I enjoyed taking part in this process, particularly meeting the users involved and hearing some of their feedback. The current round of user testing has now been completed and the app is going through another phase of iteration before the next round of testing later this year.

Usability Evaluation

UX & UIteamwork, usability evaluation, User testing

For this project I worked as part of a team of four students to conduct a website usability evaluation for a social media start-up called SilOOette which was based in the Media Cube at IADT.

SilOOette aimed to connect individuals through their interests. Users could follow topics rather than people, thereby choosing only the topics they want to see and creating their own unique news-stream.

“Cut through the noise and create a filtered News Stream, one filled only with the stuff you care about.”

Testing

Our team compiled a script to brief our users on the testing process. It was felt that this would help to put them at ease and make them aware that the focus of the test was the website itself rather than their own ability. It also allowed for consistency in the testing process as each member of the team carried out tests individually. Each user also signed a consent form and completed a pre-test questionnaire to assess their social media use.

Test scenarios were created by the team to replicate real life use of the website and identify user pain points. The purpose of these scenarios was to maintain consistency between user tests and to give our testers clear instructions, and so avoid placing them under undue stress.

Users were required to sign up to SilOOette using a dummy email address. They were then directed through the test scenarios which required them to follow topics that interested them, edit their profiles, connect with another user, find specified topics, create a post and link content from an external website. Camtasia was used to record the tests with users’ permission. A total of ten users completed these tests, after which they completed a post-test questionnaire.

Data Analysis

Once all tests had been completed the data was analysed by the team. The data gathered included a five second test to give initial impressions of the website, the length of time taken to complete each scenario, user pain points, pre- and post-test questionnaires and general comments.

In general users liked the appearance of the website. However there were numerous user pain points identified which the team grouped into four main issues:

Connecting to other users was unsatisfactory due to the necessity to click through users individually, plus there was no bio information about users
Navigation difficulties
Confusion about editing profiles and understanding some elements of same
Issues around creating and posting content were the most problematic, due to the fact that SilOOette’s topics of interest was split into sub-topics called channels – this caused great confusion and irritation for users as the difference between topics and channels was unclear

Reporting Results

The team interpreted the results of the data and produced a comprehensive report which included

Introduction and brief summary of the website’s aims and uses
Identification of the usability goals that were tested (i.e. effectiveness, efficiency and engaging) along with the type of usability testing that was being conducted (i.e. ease of learning)
Summary of the testing documents used: script, consent form, pre-test questionnaire, test scenarios, data collection document, post-test questionnaire
Description of the tests carried out and summary of the data gathered, including our own analysis and interpretation
Conclusions and recommendations for design changes

Some of our recommendations to improve the user experience of this website were:

Improve navigation between pages
Include a search bar
Explain the meaning of channels and topics
SilOOette rated it’s users on integrity which some testers interpreted negatively, the team suggested substituting another word
Include a tutorial to introduce the website and it’s operation
Improve the user experience of connecting to other users, e.g. provide a list of users to connect with

Conclusion

As this was a team assignment, it was necessary to ensure good communication and teamwork between group members to ensure it was completed to a satisfactory standard. A facebook group was set up and tasks were divided up between team members. This approach worked well and I enjoyed working on this project. The usability evaluation was completed on time and was well received, both by the module lecturer and by the people at SilOOette.

The grade received for this project was an A.

Group IT Project

UX & UIAxure, Illustrator, nutrition, Photoshop, Psychology, Research, teamwork, User testing, user-centred design

This project brings together students from the two streams of the Applied Psychology course (psychology with technology and pure psychology) to work as a team on production of an IT solution that is underpinned by significant, credible, research-based psychological knowledge and understanding.

This project is still ongoing and culminates in the development of a prototype and it’s showcase at an Interactive Display in May of this year.

I have included this project in my portfolio because it brings together many of the skills I have honed during my degree and applies them in the development of a proposed solution to an identified user need, from the idea stage right through to the high fidelity prototype.

NutriClear

A Scientifically-Researched User-Friendly Nutrition App

The Team consists of four students, two from the pure psychology stream and two from the technology stream.

As one of the two technology students, the skills I brought to the team included:

an understanding of user-centred design principles and their application
knowledge of the process of user testing and iteration
experience compiling low and high fidelity prototypes, using software like Photoshop, Illustrator & Axure

The Idea – Various ideas were discussed in the early stages. One area of common interest between team members was nutrition – specifically the fact that there is a lot of contradictory information available which is confusing for the layperson, plus there are some important areas which are not sufficiently highlighted.

In spite of the huge number of nutrition apps that are available, or perhaps because of them, we felt strongly that there is an existing need for a user-friendly app that provides unbiased, clear and scientifically-researched information to help users in making healthy food choices. Some possible features we discussed included:

a barcode scanner which provides nutritional information in a traffic light system so that users can easily make informed choices about the food they buy
information about the food pyramid illustrating to the user how many portions of the various food groups they should aim to consume
information about how diet affects health, with a special focus on mental health and immunity
clear scientific information about various popular diets, e.g. gluten-free, paleo, vegetarian, vegan
link to a website that would go into more detail

Background Research – in order to investigate this further we researched a number of existing nutrition apps.

One of the most relevant to our proposed IT solution is Fooducate. This app includes a barcode scanner with traffic light system for displaying nutritional information, and it gives feedback on quantity and quality of daily consumed calories. However the mobile app is not available outside of the United States.

Another nutrition app that we researched was My Fitness Pal, this app allows users to keep track of their diet and exercise patterns in order to help them loose weight. Although this app had some similarities to our proposed solution, we felt it was aimed at people who are actively seeking to loose weight while our vision was an app that would educate users about food and health.

We decided as a result of researching many more nutrition apps that it would be useful to include recipes appropriate to foods that the user scanned, as well as a feature to save favourite recipes.

Identifying a Need – at this stage we decided to carry out a survey to ascertain the level of interest in our proposed solution. A ten question survey was compiled on Survey Monkey and circulated via social media. Results of the survey showed most interest in 2 areas: the barcode scanner and information on how diet affects physical and mental health. Due to the low level of interest in the various diets (gluten-free, paleo etc) we decided not to include this in the prototype.

Developing IT Solution – the first step in development was to put ideas on paper. We drew up paper prototypes and user tested them as a mobile app using POP and received some very useful feedback which was incorporated into the high fidelity prototype. Some of these suggestions included

link the barcode scanner with the food pyramid so that when a user scans an item, the user receives feedback as to where it belongs on the food pyramid
record daily calorie intake and compare it with recommended levels
clearly explain nutritional jargon
include a section on weight in the health section and explain the effects of being overweight on health
navigation was confusing and needs to be more consistent
include a search function so that the user could search for recipes / health content

These suggestions were implemented into the design and work began on the high fidelity prototypes, which are currently being developed. Some of the high fidelity screens can be seen above.

User Testing and Iteration

Dissemination

Elaine Kavanagh

Portfolio