Clickable Prototype
Our app Early Birds aims to help users build healthy morning routines by encouraging them to create + complete morning tasks and steering them away from distracting electronic usage. In our app, notice 4 main function clusters, as displayed in our navigation bar: tasks, streaks, notification manager, and app access friction. Our user begins by completing an onboarding flow, which allows them to initialize app access friction and notification blocking. Once they finish onboarding, the app brings them to their home, or tasks page. From there, they can start to create tasks, assign them to days, mark their progress, and track their task completion history. An important element of Early Birds is its motivating messages, as it’s meant to make morning routines uplifting and exciting. See our clickable prototype here!
Usability Script
Below is our usability script, which guides us as we allow users to test our app.
Introduction Script
Hi, ___________. My name is ___________, and I’m going to be walking you through this session today.
Before we begin, I have some information for you, and I’m going to read it to make sure that I cover everything.
You probably already have a good idea of why we asked you here, but let me go over it again briefly. We’re asking people to try using a mobile app prototype that we’re working on so we can see whether it works as intended. The session should take about 30 minutes.
The first thing I want to make clear right away is that we’re testing the app, not you. You can’t do anything wrong here.
As you use the app, I’m going to ask you as much as possible to try to think out loud: to say what you’re looking at, what you’re trying to do, and what you’re thinking. This will be a big help to us. Also, please don’t worry that you’re going to hurt our feelings. We’re doing this to improve it, so we need to hear your honest reactions.
If you have any questions, feel free to stop me and ask them along the way. With your permission, we’re going to record your interactions with the prototype. The recording will only be used to help us figure out how to improve the app, and it won’t be seen by anyone except the people working on this project. If you would, I’m going to ask you to sign a simple permission form for us. It just says that we have your permission to record your interactions with the app and that the recording will only be seen by the people working on the project.
Provide them with a Google doc link to the permission form.
Do you have any questions so far?
Questions
First off, do you actively participate in a morning routine?
What apps do you typically use in the morning?
If you typically use apps in the morning, how long do you typically use these apps for?
Is there any particular mobile app you use to help you with your morning routine?
First Look
Open the clickable prototype on Figma. Allow the user to take a look at our home page and talk about their first impressions and thoughts on the layout.
Now, before you start doing anything, just look at the first screen and tell me what you make of it: what strikes you about it, what you think you can do with it, and what it’s for. Just look around and do a little narrative.
Allow this to continue for two or three minutes, at most.
Task Intro
Thanks. Now I’m going to ask you to try doing some specific tasks. I’m going to explain each task to you. Before you start completing the tasks, if you have any questions about the task prompt, let me know.
I’m also going to ask you to do these tasks as much as you can on your own without worrying about whether you are doing them correctly. We’ll learn a lot more about how well the app works that way. And again, as much as possible, it will help us if you can try to think out loud as you go along.
Task 1
Create a template morning routine that consists of the tasks you want to perform in the morning and apply it as your morning routine.
Task 2
Whitelist some of the apps.
Task 3
Change the settings of the notification manager in order to manage notifications.
Task 4
Check your streaks info.
Probing Questions
- Ask about certain aspects of their efforts in going through the tasks which stood out.
- Ask whether they had any ethical considerations about whether they feel comfortable having an app manage the notifications from other apps.
- Ask whether they had any other ethical considerations.
- Follow-up questions:
- What do you think is the purpose of whitelisting apps?
- How do you think the notification manager works?
- What are the differences between app whitelisting and notifications manager?
- What do the streaks represent?
Wrap Up
Ask the participant if they have any questions for us.
- Thank them for their time
- Stop screen recording
- Connect with them if they wish to see the results of our prototype/testing
Notes for Project Team
Goals
- Understanding
- Customizability
- Difference between notification testing
Target Audience
- College students/new grads who want to improve or build a morning routine
Description & Criteria
- Can they create tasks for a template routine?
- Can they apply a template to the morning?
- Can they whitelist apps?
- Can they manage notifications?
- Can they access streaks info?
Ethical Considerations
- Are users comfortable with us managing notifications on their other apps?
- Do the users consider the app to be too resistive?
- Are there any ethical aspects of the app that the users are concerned with?
