Usability Report Team #3 – A Higher Common Sense

Problem #1

What is or isn’t a clickable button was confusing

- Issue: There were moments when our testers weren’t sure if something was a button/link. For example, the “Sign Up Now” link that is shown during onboarding looked like a regular header, so that the only option for users seemed to be to Log In. In another case, our current brand “logo” icon gave people the impression of being an “edit” or “upload” button, when it actually wasn’t meant to do anything.
- Solution: To address these issues, we plan to ensure that each clickable action is consistently styled (formatted as a button, with a clear action purpose) and rethink our logo and its purpose on the screen throughout usage of the app. If we want to keep what it is now (a tea mug with a pen inside), we will consider actually linking it to an action that makes sense, such as uploading media, as a way to give users another way to complete that action and associate the logo with our app.

Problem #2

Confusion by the combination of social elements (stories) with personal items (gallery) on home page

- Issue: Our testers expressed confusion about the combination of social and personal components on the “home” page. The ‘stories’ bubbles at the top of the page are reminiscent of snapchat and instagram stories, yet the gallery at the bottom looked like a news feed, even though it was a gallery of personal artwork. It confused users because it wasn’t clear if the gallery on the home page was artwork from friends, or their own.
- Solution: We plan to address this by removing the gallery from the home page and keeping it just on the “profile” page, where other personal links can be found, and leaving the home page more exclusively for the social aspects of the app, such as viewing friend stories, browsing the current creativity prompts from various groups, and managing the user’s friend groups.

Problem #3

Users are unsure about what to do with “today’s prompt” on the home page.

Issue: One of our testers said they were unsure whether the prompt was just “floating” and whether they should close it. Another tester also said it looked more like a popup rather than an element of the page.
Solution: We could make “today’s prompt”on the home page seem to be more part of the page rather than a popup, and that it can be either closed or responded to at any time. We can do this by removing the shadows in the outline and making it look swipeable.
Severity: Moderate.

Problem #4

Users were unsure about where “today’s prompt” came from.

Issue: The label “today’s prompt” gives no indication whatsoever about which group issued the prompt, which confused one of our teters.
Solution: We change the wording to “GROUP_NAME prompt”. If there are different prompts from different groups, they could be stacked on top of one another and the user would be able to swipe through them one at a time.
Severity: Moderate.

Problem #5

Not all pages have a back button.

Issue: We found that users often made use of the back button in order to undo or reconsider previous actions – however, not all screens in our app featured a back button in the top right corner, such as the group page..
Solution: Add a back button to all relevant pages. This solution is simple and should be trivial to make.
Severity: Moderate

Problem #6

Gallery on the home page layout is ambiguous.

Issue: One user expressed confusion about how the gallery on the profile page was laid out, asking if it was a carousel or a grid. On top of the fact that our team is unsure of which it should be, neither option is particularly scalable to a large number of media that a hypothetical long-term user might have.
Solution: Redesign gallery on profile screen for scalability and user intuition. A carousel with a “see all” button should be sufficient and easy to add to the prototype.
Severity: Trivial-Moderate

Problem #7

Adding people to a new group is unintuitive.

Issue: The “create/add to group” screen was problematic in our user tests – one tester found the page confusing to take in at first glance, and even after further examination was confused by how certain elements would work. (For example, the tester questioned how adding friends would work, considering the relative lack of functionality for friends in the prototype.) Visual hierarchy was also weak, as the user was slow to recognize certain headers and mentally arranged certain fields from different sections together.
Solution: We can make the “create/add to group” screen more intuitive through a somewhat extensive visual overhaul to hierarchy and organization. The headers of the page should stand out more, and adding friends could potentially be done with a more visual-focused method of clickable stickers for each friend. This solution is somewhat work-intensive, but still doable.
Severity: Moderate-Severe

Problem #8

Organization of the create/join group page is confusing.

Issue: We have one page where you have the option to either create a new group or join a new group. One user commented that this page was cluttered and it was unclear that you could do both functionalities from this page.
Solution: Given that this is an important functionality, we definitely want to fix this. One potential solution would be to separate out the “create group” and “join group” into two separate groups.
Severity: Severe

Problem #9

Notification page lacks organization and has an overwhelming amount of text.

Issue: As of now our notification page displays all notifications sequentially on a single page. One user commented that it is overwhelming having to sift through all the notifications to find the relevant one.
Solution: One potential solution would be to provide a preview of the notification so that the user can more quickly identify what it’s about, and we can also organize the notification page into subgroups for the major notification groups such as feedback, new posts, group creations, etc.

Severity: Moderate