Knit
Evaluation Findings
Some of the major parts of the interaction that we had to redesign were the Sync page and the Reminder page. For the Contacts Synchronization page our testers were confused about subtle aspects such as the drop-down menu and final submission button. The drop-down menu wasn’t intuitive for them because they had to select several social media sources at once to pool together their desired contacts. It was difficult to design a way to help users pick contacts from each source at once, rather than separately. Additionally, the final submission button was misused because users would press it after selecting only a few of the contacts that they were told to select.
We also found it difficult to design the Reminder setting page, since we had to fit a lot of information into a single page. We had to make sure that the page was easy to interact with but versatile enough to provide for a multitude of reminder options. Some of the major changes that we made were the placement of the communication methods and the elements used to set the reminder time and frequency. Overall users were able to successfully set reminders, but adjustments were needed to make the page more consistent with the reset of the app.
With our findings formerly investigated, we took what we learned and designed the rest of the app.
After conducting the tests, we were able to identify some design issues that were difficult for users. While we observed users exhibit a variety of behaviors at different stages of the prototype, their experiences can be broken down into a series of patterns. These patterns are as follows:
Finding 1:
One of the biggest trouble areas for users was the “Syncing Contacts” page. Users were asked to sync “Mom” from their phone and “Toni” and “Mitch” from twitter. As it stands, the page features a window to display contacts, a dropdown menu to select a source to pool contacts from, a search bar to assist in finding contacts, and a large submit button meant to finalize the selection process. However, without any verbal prompts, some users didn’t know where to start looking for their contacts. For example, some users began by pressing the search bar, which did not yield results. And when every user used the dropdown menu, they only selected from one source, although we had intended for them to pick from multiple sources before choosing their contacts. Additionally, users often finalized their submissions before selecting all of the contacts that they were tasked to sync. This indicates a need for redesign and clarification, otherwise users may not sync all of their desired contacts at the initial setup and prematurely navigate to the home screen. One user suggested adding a “+” button on the right of the bars that represent each contact as a method for adding a contact to the sync list.
Finding 2:
When completing task two, creating a reminder for a specific contact, there were a few different interpretations by the users. There is currently two options for creating reminders: one is a shortcut displayed as a “+” button and it lays next to each contact within the newsfeed, the other method was to go to the reminders tab and then select a contact before arriving at add reminders page. We initially believed that the shortcut would mainly be used by intermediate users who held some sort of understanding of the app, but to our surprise the only user to use this shortcut described their technological use as “poor." This leads us to believe that we may be putting emphasis on the reminders tab itself and not enough on the shortcut. One of our users stated his reasoning was that he thought of it as selecting how you want to interact with that person within the newsfeed. Most other users were able to complete the task without difficulties, but understanding how to articulate shortcuts to the user will improve the efficiency and their experience as a whole.
Finding 3:
An additional issue among our users regarded the push notification. We initially designed the prototype with the belief that they would swipe the notification itself which on an iPhone takes them directly into the app. This would take them directly into the contact’s profile for which the notification was made. However, we didn’t account for users who swiped the lock screen and manually opened the app from the iPhone’s home interface. We plan on addressing this by having the app open directly to the contact’s page when a reminder is reached instead of the home screen. This led us to also take consideration for what specific medium the user’s will be accessing the app, whether through an iPhone or an Android, since they may have different functional elements for opening applications which may have an affect on the overall user experience.