Assignment 6 ​

Task List ​

For the second study, do the same tasks but in the following order:

• 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 6, 5, 2

Study Introduction ​

For this study, you will be asked to complete a set of tasks on a prototype of an application. Please note that the purpose of the study is to assess the quality of the design of the app, not to test your ability in using apps or anything of that nature. Any information from this study will be used to improve the design of the application. As such, please try to talk through what you are thinking as you complete the tasks. This can include anything from observations to questions to moments of confusion--the more you explain, the better. Before we begin, would you be okay with me recording this session?

Debrief Questions ​

• What tasks, if any, did you find challenging?
• What was challenging about those tasks?
• What parts of the application worked well?
• What parts of the application were unexpected or could be improved?

Study Report 1 ​

Overall, the user got through all the tasks fairly quickly and easily. For the tasks that involved features that were accessible from the menu bar (i.e. login, save, featured), the user was able to grasp the task very quickly, navigate to the correct page, and find the information that they were looking for on that page, saying statements such as, "I see the featured title in the menu, so I"ll click on that," or "I'll go to the saved page..." etc. However, there was slightly more confusion for tasks that involved buttons on the home page. For example, while adding tags went fairly smoothly, removing tags was more confusing. The user said, "I remember that I added this tag to this post, but if I didn't remember, I wouldn't know what tag name to write to remove." The user later noticed the "see tags" button, which they did not see before, but they also commented that it was confusing for the "see tags" button to still be present after the tags were made visible. The user also mentioned that they "did not really know what a tag was," stating that "it seems like it's for commenting on a post." In addition, there was some confusion for the task of adding notes to a save post. When undergoing this task, the user said they would "click on 'edit notes'" in a slightly questioning tone, and upon being prompted for clarification, she stated that it was slightly confusing since editing implies that there is something that already exists to be edited, but she had not added any notes yet. Lastly, during the debrief, the user made some comments about some of the colors of the application, stating that the dark background made some of the captions difficult to read, such as the ones for the two search bars. In addition, she stated that it would be helpful to condense post blocks and incorporate a "see more" button, since this makes it easier to look for new posts without having to scroll for a long time, especially on the longer posts. She also stated that she wondered what the "difference was between searching by tag and searching by any keyword." Lastly, she brought up the question, "what's stopping people from making posts not related to food?" which brings up an interesting question about how the application would be used in the real world. However, overall, she found the application fairly intuitive, and she was able to see "everything that was going on" when working through the tasks, finding each page or button that she needed fairly easily.

Study Report 2 ​

During the second study, the user also completed all of the tasks very quickly and without much pause. Again, the tasks that involved the menu bar seemed to pass much more fluently, whereas features unrelated to the menu bar incited many more moments of hesitation, albeit brief moments for the most part. Similar to the previous user, after adding her first tag, this user also commented, "I'm a little confused as to why there's a 'see tags' button when I can see the tags. I feel like there shouldn't be a 'see tags' button when I can see the tags." Later on during the debrief, when asked about this task, the user also commented that she thought it was strange how large the 'see tags' button was compared to the other per-post buttons (i.e. save, add tag, remove tag). She said she would prefer if it was a similar size to the other buttons. When asked to add notes to a saved post, the user also showed a similar confusion to the previous user. After navigating to the saved page, she hesitated briefly, and after some prompting, she said that "I think it's because there's no 'add notes' button and there's only an 'edit notes,' which is a weird button to have when I haven't created any notes," mirroring the sentiment of the previous user and elaborating that "edit usually happens after you've already added something." However, she was still able to complete the task successfully. During the final debrief, the user said that "all of the tasks were pretty straightforward; I only hesitated on the one where I had to add vs. edit the notes." Apart from that, "everything was pretty self-explanatory," and it was "pretty easy to find each of the features that were mentioned in the tasks such as saved, featured, etc." She also liked the live updates of the tags and saves. She also liked the buttons for the most part, except for the 'see tags' button (both the length and the interface of the button still being there after tags are shown; she suggested that when clicked, the button change to a 'hide tags' button). Lastly, she was a little confused by the formatting of some of the dummy posts, but overall, the design was fairly intuitive to the user.

Design Flaws ​

• Edit notes button (minor conceptual flaw): both users hesitated at the 'edit notes' button, stating that it was a bit odd for the button to be called 'edit notes' when no notes had been added yet, and their task was to add notes; however, despite the brief moment of hesitation, both users clicked on the 'edit notes' button and quickly realized that this was the interface for adding and editing notes; the flaw is minor in that it only introduced some confusion but did not stop the users from completing the task, and it is conceptual because the conventional idea of editing seems to imply that there is something already created that needs to be edited, conflicting with the concept of adding something
• See tags button (moderate conceptual and physical flaw): both users expressed confusion about the see tags button; in terms of conceptual and physical design, they were confused about why the button was still present after tags were made visible, for which a design solution would be to implement the suggestion of turning the 'see tags' button into a 'hide tags' button upon being clicked; there were also some problems with the 'see tags' button being much longer than other similar buttons (the second user disliked the aesthetics of it, and for the first user, the button size led her to initially miss that this was a button at all)
• Search bar font color (minor physical flaw): the black font of the captions for types of searches was hard to see on the dark brown application background; this did not stop either user from completing the search related tasks, but it is worth noting that both participants have pretty good vision; for the future, it may be better to have a more contrasting color, such as cream or white
• Tag concept and layout (moderate linguistic flaw): the first user expressed some confusion about the concept of tags, and upon reflection, it seems that this might be somewhat related to the layout; the current application does not support public commenting on a post, which is pretty uncommon in the current landscape of social media apps; as such, it would be understandable to mistake tags for comments, especially if one is not familiar with a similar concept on other platforms; in addition, there is no indication in the application that your tags are private, so users do not know that others are not able to see their tags; the brute force solution to this would be to explain somewhere in the settings what a 'tag' is and the fact that they are currentlyd designed to be private, but perhaps the layout could be redesigned so that tags are above or on the sides of the post, since this would be less likely to evoke the feeling of a comments section (because comments are traditionally shown under the original post on most platforms)