Assignment 3 — UX2

Process

My process in understanding the effectiveness and accuracy of my designed prototype, included the following procedure:

1. Break down the problem
2. Research trends and conventions
3. Understand the target market by qualitative and quantitive methods of research (interviews and surveys)
4. Create user personas of the defined audience
5. Define user goals
6. Analyse findings

This process allowed me in understanding that the prototype I created was good, but not great. I understood the real power the app held after my interviews and surveys; my testing participants opened my narrow view on the use of the app.

That, each participant has a different life, a different living situation and a different mindset.

As such, the way they take care of their beloved pet and the information they require might be different too. This means, the features of the app they might use the most, will most likely be different as well. Consequently, I knew that I had to enhance every angle of the app for optimum success, for all users, and not focus on one area. Since the context variation was chosen as my variation to develop, this meant successful usability, functionality and learnability in ALL areas of the brief, not only adopting pets. Thus, developing the care section, adoption section and my pet section of the app further.

Findings

My major findings included 5 user goals:

• Users want reliable information.
• Users want information tailored to them.
• Users want to access information quickly.
• Users want lots of detailed information.
• Users want user-friendly apps.

These goals outlined a few vital approaches when redesigning the app.

• Minimalism — Employing a minimalistic design approach, manipulating hierarchy and gestalt principles will be vital in the improved app design as it had to be user friendly and overall appealing to use on a daily basis.
• Utilising UX Principles — Manipulating UI and other UX principles would allow for an efficient user experience that enables users to jump in and out of the app quickly, leaving with the information they intended.
• Trends + conventions — My audience isn’t age bound. Thus, utilising trends and conventions will not only support the app’s functionality, usability and learnability — but create something that users will want to open and interact with everyday in supporting them in taking care of their pet. Plus, for an app with so much information, I had to find creative ways to organise this (and trends can support this search).
• Personalisation — My findings allowed me in understanding the importance of personalisation, particularly in its successes for this app design; as each participant has a different life, a different living situation and a different mindset. Thus, I had to implement it in some form.

Storyboarding

Before I began to prototype I created 2 storyboards, based of the user scenarios I created with my user persona’s. These storyboards were developed with the intention of exploring user’s interaction with the app. Both storyboards showcase the varying circumstances in which a user may leverage the app. This step guided my decision making process when developing screens as it supported my understanding of the user journey and task flow by delving into the situational context the app would be used in.

Storyboards

Prototyping

My findings showed that the design’s visual style didn’t match the aesthetic of what users wanted. I also thought I could create something more visually appealing, contemporary and further, user-friendly. Thus, using my findings, I created a new visual style. However I only implemented this visual style on 4 screens as I decided to test my assumption that this design was better. I conducted an A/B Split test to find out the preferred visual style and UX/UI functionality of the app. This was done by comparing the 4 new screens against their older designed versions.

Split Testing 1 — Adoption Home Page

Split Testing 2 — Adoption Page

Split Testing 3 — Home Page

Split Testing 4— My Pet Page

Results found that my new redesign was better suited, so I created a full prototype on this visual style.

**User Persona’s available to view below

Challenges

Some challenges I found when collating the full prototype was organising and categorising the large amounts of information in a manner that kept the minimalistic appeal the users preferred. Furthermore, it was challenging to gather the information in a process that wasn’t confusing, both for understandability and usability in terms of having too many screens and clicks.

I overcame these by utilising pop ups, so users understood the relevance of the information and its relation to the content. Furthermore, manipulating visual hierarchy, type, shape and colour to create a system of categorisation that helped organised an effective layout. As seen in the diet screen.

Visualisation of pop ups + manipulation for an effective layout.

Testing + Improvements

I conducted a final test to ensure all areas of the app performed at its optimum. This test was conducted by asking participants a set of questions and asking them to use the prototype, to understand their navigational process. Suggestions on changes from participants were encouraged. Effective changes were made and employed into the final prototype.

Final prototype

My final prototype addresses all major user goals.

• Users want reliable and detailed information — When adopting their future pet, all information regarding the adoption can be found through the app. Things ranging from past records, to where to buy their favourite treats, to their feeding schedule.
• Users want information tailored to them — Users can input information about their pet before fully using the app. Plus, once inputting their breed, the app automatically applies it’s information from the database, so most information has already been inputted wihtout the user having too. Through this, users can find information fully tailored to them and their pet, quickly and at the tip of their fingers.
• Users want to access information quickly — When searching for adopting pets, or finding care for them, the app caters for their needs through the use of filters. Plus, the app (through the help of storyboarding), minimises the amount of individual screens for quick transitions between areas of the app.
• Users want user-friendly apps — Minimalism and the use of various trends and conventions, is employed in the design to create the most user friendly approach. Furthermore, colour has been manipulated to increase usability and type, shape and visual hierarchy have been utilised to support learnability, functionality and understandability in creating a user friendly design.

Reflection

Overall, I’m happy with the prototype I created. I do believe I could have improved the visual effects in creating more contrast in some of the screens and further employed a few more trends to create a richer design. However, I am satisfied that I successfully accomplished all the user goals.

**User Persona’s