Document organizer: Unmoderated usability testing

Project description:

Create a new user interface to enable users to store and work with document files.

Project impact:

Enable Product team to confidently start the build of the new application based on knowledge that the user interface the Design team created is intuitive to end users.

User experience design issues were discovered through research and then addressed by the design team early in the product development lifecycle. Making the changes at this stage is more cost effective because Developers do not need to do rework to correct the issue in the user experience.

Define the problem

Worked with stakeholders to define the problem space and decide what aspects of the overall experience is in an out of scope for this research. Established clear timelines based on the project team's needs and the scope of this research.

Problem Statement:

Users need a way to upload, move, rename, and download document files. The design team has created a potential solution to address these needs. Use research to ensure design meets the needs of the end users.

Create study plan

Define project background, business objectives, research objectives, timeline, and specific questions to ask participants during the study. Work with design, product, and development stakeholders to validate the information in the test plan and ensure the stakeholder's key questions are addressed.

Research objective:

Assess the usability of the designs by determining if users can complete the main tasks (upload, move, rename and download).

Project type:

Unmoderated usability testing, with a Figma prototype, in UserZoom

Recruit and schedule participants

Recruited 150 participants through the UserZoom panel. Screened out participants who do not frequently work with document files. Gathered demographics on age, tech-savviness, and occupation. Enabled participants to self-identify if they had a disability if they chose to do so.

Run sessions

Setup study questions and prototype links in UserZoom. Setup validation links so I could see pass vs fail for specific tasks. Launched study then analyzed the data after all participants completed the usability test.

Analyze data

Scrub data to remove speeders and cheaters. Removed participants with aggressively short completion rates. Also removed participants that provided nonsensical responses in multiple open-ended text response questions.

Reviewed pass fail metrics to determine if a feature needed to be redesigned.

Reviewed open ended responses to dig into the why behind task failures.

Used online white boarding tool (Mural) to consolidate and organize information learned during the discovery interviews.

Create presentation

Created slide deck and Confluence page to convey key learnings from the research to the stakeholders and decision makers.

Present findings

Presented findings to stakeholders while allowing room for discussion of each key finding. Utilizing this method enables stakeholders to build a shared understanding of the finding and if it is an issue commit to a specific owner and timeframe to address the issue.

Follow-up

Met with design team to carry findings forward when design decisions were made by acting as the voice of the user in design meetings.

Track progress towards rectifying issues by following up with the owner to check in about the status.