Within this blog I will demonstrate how I conducted my User Testing for my health application.
Within catching covid I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to perform as in-depth user testing as I would have aim for going into this project. However I was able to send my Figma link forward to my sister, brother who share this with my granny and mum. This gave me option to have the views of a range of ages using my application.
What I received back from my 3 sources wasn’t a lot if I’m honest just because I wasn’t able to sit with them physically and talk them through the functions of each screen due to isolating in my room my last week before the deadline. However, I did an understanding of how all three used the application as I had the age ranges of 15, 25, 48 and 72.
My brother and sister who are both more than familiar with technology and applications etc were both successful in signing up and making their way through each screen. They both mentioned a confusion with functions of a few screens that they brought to my attention. Their user presence on my app after speaking with them both made me aware of the functions that were working as they should have been. For example I had been prototyping on figma and then checking the interactions after designing and not realising that at times some interactions were once activated by the users were breaking other interaction because I had created more than one interaction on one screen to perform the same outcome. This was something that I had caught previously so has been something I’ve been working on but thanks to their user testing specific areas have been mentioned that I have missed out on while prototyping through. Other than these issue both of them understood my idea and mentioned that they could see the potential for this service out there for users like myself. They were able to demonstrate a good understanding of the navigation in place and the reasoning and functions of each screen made available to them.
My mum who uses her phone regularly also but isn’t all that well aware of the functions of applications was able to sign up successfully and navigate her way using the navigation system. She understood the concept behind the app and was able to show a strong understanding of what she would need to do as a user in order to input certain information for the app to function.
My granny who uses her Facebook on her tablet and still regularly uses her house phone over her Nokia mobile wasnt too successful with the app. My granny isn’t knowledgeable on technology at all and brought it to my attention that she could work out how to get to the next page after the welcome pages. I had prototyped these to be a swiping motion but seeing as this is an area that someone of my granny age might be unfamiliar with I will add the functionality of a next button to these screens to ensure that the user wants to continue on and doesn’t stop navigating through the app after the first screen. It has taken us almost 5 years just to get my nanny to understand how to scroll up on Facebook so I suspected that she wouldn’t be too familiar with the workings of my app but this gives me the space for improvement to try and reach those users like my granny by possibly designing a more simple design.
Online User Testing
I also decided to use my online resources as best as I could while isolating to try and get as much usability testing complete as I could before the deadline. I posted in three Facebook groups two specifically for UX design –Women in UX and UI / UX Designers & Developers and the other in an Arthritis group – Autoimmune and Arthritis Support Group.
As of yet I haven’t received anything back from these groups but I am regularly watching both the UX groups and lots of people send in their prototype for user testing using these groups so I expect some responses soon within these groups.
