Introduction: Our app is an iMessage extension to facilitate social planning via scheduling and mindfulness interventions. It is directly integrated with the user’s text messages, allowing the user to codify their plans in the environment in which they are created, reducing friction while preserving autonomy. Our app contains four main features, which are the subject of our usability testing: our scheduling assistant automatically detects potential plans from text messages, proposing scheduling based on calendar integrations and creating calendar invites. Once created, the user can update plan status and their attendance via a pre-event check in. After the event time has passed, users can reflect on the outcome via a post-event check in. Finally, users can monitor their overall behavior via their Flake Score. We aim to test both how usable our app is as well as how useful it is. That is, part of our usability testing targets how well the app communicates its core functions. We test this through the tasks that our participants complete, tracking misclicks, errors, confusion, as well as successes, but having our participants talk out loud though their process. Second, we follow up our tasks with open ended questions about participants’ experiences to learn more about how effectively our design translates insights from our baseline and intervention studies.
Tyler Abernethy, Vardhan, Agrawal, Katherine Sullivan, Sunny Yu. Team Alpaca Clickable Prototype and Usability Script. March 10, 2026.
