Assignment 6: User Testing & Analysis
Task list
| Title | Instruction | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Register an user | Create an account | I want to know if users can differentiate between the login and signup pages. |
| Read through the post list | Scroll down a bit to see some of the current posts | Find out if users are able to find the "Top" button easily, and generally watch attentively at where they are looking to understand their reaction to the visual display of the posts. |
| Create a tag | Create a tag | To understand if they can figure out where the tag creation resource is. Additionally, test the check grammar and spelling mistakes feature, and if it annoys users who have tried creating a tag unsuccessfully. |
| Attach tags | Create a post and attach tags to it, potentially removing one of them | To understand how the users make use of the search feature for tags and how they like the removal feature (if it's easy or hard). |
| Search your own post | Given the previous post you created, search for it | To understand how intuitive it is to grasp that the search feature only works with tags and if they're confused to which part of the website they ended up. Additionally, watch closely how they find their way back to the home page (if they're able to see the button). |
| Highlights | Try to see all posts made at any specific date | To understand if they get the point of the highlights feature, and how they navigate the slide show. |
| Change password | Try changing your password | To understand if they find their way to the "change password" feature easily and if they're able to go back to home. |
| Logout | Try logging out | To see if they easily find the feature. |
| Delete user | Try deleting your user | To see how intuitive it is to find that resource and how they realize the gravity of deleting an user given my warning. |
Interview reports
Letícia
In my observation of Leticia's interactions with my website, several noteworthy moments and insights emerged. These experiences shed light on areas where user interface improvements and user expectations alignment are needed.
Confusion during registration: Letícia's initial interaction with the website started with confusion. She couldn't decisively determine whether she was on the login or signup page. I suspected that her alternating between these two pages indicated a lack of clarity in the interface design.
Tag creation and post disappearance: Letícia's attempt to create a post and add tags uncovered a usability issue. When her text disappeared after creating a new tag, she verbally asked me whether her post had been successfully submitted.
Password change feedback: After changing her password, Leticia received no indication that the change was successful. Her question, "did it change my password already?", underscores the importance of providing clear and immediate feedback to assure users that their requested actions have been completed successfully. Even I was unsure if the action had been successful or not. However, she was extremely quick to find the path where she thought she'd find the change password feature, which made me happy.
Navigation challenges: Letícia's difficulty in returning to the main feed, even when the "feed" and "home" buttons were present, raises questions about the visibility and effectiveness of these buttons. They didn't actually refresh the feed when you clicked on them, and I could see Letícia clicking many times thinking it was just the sensitivity of her mouse. I should fix these buttons later.
Tag search behavior: When I asked her to search for a specific tag, I could see Leticia's eyes going to the top of the page. Her instinct to search for tags in the navigation bar, despite the absence of a search bar there, indicates that users may expect to find this feature in a specific location. This presents an opportunity to enhance the website's intuitiveness by placing the search bar where users are more likely to look for it.
Recap slideshow interaction: Letícia's interaction with the recap slideshow revealed a usability challenge. Her attempt to click on the bubbles for slide navigation highlights the need for improved signalization. Users may mistakenly perceive the bubbles as clickable elements. Ensuring that the arrows for slide navigation are more prominent and intuitive can prevent such misconceptions (I felt the urge to tell her to click the arrows to pass the slide, but I didn't. She never figured it out on her own; she simply thought the bubbles were not working as expected).
In summary, Letícia's user interactions have provided valuable insights into the website's user experience. These observations emphasize the importance of clarity, feedback, and intuitive design to enhance the overall usability of the platform. By the end of the experiment, she suggested I added the feature of, when clicking the logo at the top left part of the navbar, it redirects her to the main page of the website. She also told me to make the "Go back to home" buttons more clearly; that it took her some time to find a way to go back to the main feed after changing her password.
Additionally, although not directly related with my experiment, I saw how my website looked for a person using Firefox. The whole design was extremely different, so I learned to also investigate other browsers when developing my next design.
Nico
Just as Letícia did, Nico found many implementation and design flaws:
Tag creation and guidelines: During Nico's session, I made an intriguing observation when he attempted to create a new tag. Nico tried to create a tag that had a whitespace, entering two words, "qualquer coisa." The website promptly alerted him that he had either misspelled the word or repeated some tag that already existed. Nico, however, perceived this as a glitch in the website and attempted the tag creation again. He looked at me confused, and I told him that he should read the tag creation guidelines. This interaction highlights the need for clearer communication when the user does something wrong, so they are aware which aspect wasn't allowed.
Navigation challenges: Nico's interaction also revealed a navigational challenge. He attempted to refresh the page to return to the main feed because he was unable to locate the "go back" button after making a search. This observation suggests a potential design improvement opportunity. Nico's frustration may have been alleviated if this button were made more visually distinct or better positioned.
Password change feedback: The absence of feedback following a password change attempt was noticed during Nico's session. He verbally inquired, "I think it already changed, right?" This observation underscores the importance of providing immediate and clear feedback to assure users that their requested actions have been executed successfully.
Nico also provided valuable suggestions to enhance the user experience. He recommended changing the color of the "go back" button after a search to make it visually distinct. Additionally, he proposed the inclusion of a button to return to the top of the website after scrolling down, which struck me because that was a feature already. After I showed him where it was, he proposed making it bigger. Furthermore, he suggested making the active tab visually different from inactive tabs to improve user orientation. Besides that, he said he found the website extremely easy to navigate, and multiple times complimented me on the background I chose for the theme. He never had any difficulty of the type of not knowing how to navigate it; he only felt the lack of some handy features.
Flow opportunities for improvement
I'm even ashamed at this part, because there were so many things that stood out during the interview, and I can't believe I deployed my website in this state.
General better communication (linguistic, major): Both of them were disoriented often; Letícia was confused about whether or not her text had been posted, and neither Letícia nor Nico got a confirmation that their password had been successfully changed. Not only that, but Nico insisted on his mistake many times when creating a tag. All of these things underscore the importance of communicating better with the user - let them know when an action was correctly performed or not, and why something they tried didn't conform with the website guidelines.
Buttons positioning and size (physical, critical): both Letícia and Nico didn't see the "go back" button, and Nico missed the "top" button. Additionally, while Letícia eventually found the way to go back home after going into settings, it took her some time. I'm going to take Nico's suggestions and make the "top" button bigger (he said the color was alright). He also mentioned changing the "go back" buttons to red; he would've seen them for sure if they were red.
Highlights (conceptual, moderate): neither of them seemed entertained with the highlight feature as much as the others. Letícia was even puzzled about how to navigate the slideshow and the algorithm for fetching all the posts from a specific date is broken anyway. Me as a developer am not sure about how the highlights are different from any different search. I believe I could merge this with the tag search and even expand to other types of filter (by user, by content, etc).