flukeout
commented
9 years ago Observations from Usertesting so far: Participants: 7
Executive Summary
- Zen Mode outperformed 'zoomed in with edges' mode, but is tricky to enter & leave on purpose
- Tile edges are hard to notice sometimes in edge-mode
- Discover view didn't give good indication of the nature & complexity of the content
- Discover view cover photo is very important in evaluating content
- Discover content needs more context and organization & searchability
- Starting zoomed in is better
- Panning & swiping and zooming UI & interactions work pretty well
- Choose your own adventure universally enjoyed
- Strong negative reactions by some users to non-linear flow of recipe and article content, often coupled with appreciation for Choose Your Own Adventure and One Direction content.
- Losing header when zoomed in = OK
- Users had no problem getting back to discover view
Performance Obvious but - when the app runs slowly enjoyment and ease of use is greatly diminished. This probably depends on the hardware, but the performance seemed to vary a lot.
- Often, swipe gestures in the semi-zoom wouldn't register
- Zooming and panning was sometimes slow
Discover View Overall, users scroll this page readily and look at all of the cover pages, but don't really get an idea of the type of content they'll be seeing or how the content relates to each other.
- "Pictures look interesting, but they don't seem to have anything to do with each other"
- Project list seems like a list of images
- "Looks like Pinterest"
- Projects seem like articles
- Refers to content on Discover page as "Pages"
- In general, this view doesn't convey the complexity or type of each of these projects.
- Cover images are important, people base their initial impressions of the content on them
- Interpreted as things people found or liked, but not things that people made
- Need to show that there is more to the content than the cover image, it's interpreted as 'just this image' in the beginning (
- "this is just a photo of with a caption"
- "i'd like to see the full comic strip, one panel isn't funny")
- People had no trouble getting back here via the back arrow in the header, they would readily zoom out to the map view to access it.
- User unsure what all the content is, is it just people putting up random articles?
- Looks a bit plain, nothing is popping out at first glance.
- Seems like an instagram feed or something like that
- Wants some way for the app to know what I'm interested in, content seems unrelated - a "melting pot of things I don't care about"
- "Like a tumblr kind of deal"
- Unsure what the content is - is "needle path" like a book or something?
Zen Mode People find themselves here often by accident and generally like like the helper arrows for helping them know where to go. In general, zen mode seemed more natural to use.
- Often end up in Zen Mode accidentally
- Liked zen mode more than the tile-edges way to navigate
- It's not clear that Zen Mode is an option you always have access to
- Not clear how to get out of Zen Mode
- People get why Zen Mode is good for the choose your own adventure, even if they didn't like browsing the article or the yam fries recipe non-linearly.
- Wanted the zen arrows to be on the picture itself, because it was a lot of work to look all aroudn and away from the content when trying to navigate
Project Play Mode Overall, users are able to navigate the content easily, swiping, zooming & panning readily to explore the content without many prompts. Zen Mode is often discovered by accident, and appreciated.
- Projects (like Anna Atkins) load slowly, and user wasn't sure when it was finished loading "is this all there is"?
- People like the arrows when in Zen Mode
- Add pinch gestures for zooming in and out of the map modes
- Some neighbor tiles aren't very noticeable in semi-zoom mode
- Limit panning the map so you can't pan totally away from the content and lose your space (need to define UX for this)
- "Kinda really really weird navigation" - but was able to get around easily
- Resolve android Back Button functionality - Specifically, make it zoom out of zoomed in views #1545
- Entering and exiting Zen Mode wasn't totally clear, user thought it was part of a specific project rather than a mode all projects had access to
- Nobody noticed or was thrown off by the background & header color changes in different projects.
- "I'm loving this type of nagivation, it's so new!"
- Would like a presentation mode, so the experience could be more guided
- Some people like the non-linear structure of the projects, some want more guidance and prompts about what to do.
- One user browed each project mainly at the zoom level that it started, so this seems like an important consideration for authors & different content types.
- One user - strong dislike for the non-linear layout of the recipe and article, felt it was way too much hassle trying to figure out which way to swipe to read it
- Didn't like that it wasn't more explicit which way they could swipe
- "I'd rather go up and down or left to right, but not both"
- "There should be different ways to navigate depending on the content"
- Need to restrict the pannable areas on the map views
- Strong dislike of navigation paradigm for recipe and articles - felt like it was too much work to figure out where to go and how to get around, but enjoyed it for the Comic, One Direction and Choose your own Adventure - The One Direction project was liked by a couple of people who otherwise hated the non-linear presentation, probably because it was more consistent and obvious about where the information was - it was well grouped.
- Would rather used aerial view and try to read the tiny content then mess with the navigation
- "Seems fun for the author to make, but terrible for the user"
- Didn't like backtracking through steps in the recipe he'd seen when hitting a dead end
- Navigating the recipe seems novel but not that functional
- Couple of users mention "smooth scrolling" on the semi zoom view
- Didn't like having to rely on the tile edges to know where to go
- Zoomed out recipe "Looks like a weird non-linear PDF or something"
Zoom Modes The zoom mode really affects the experience of the content. For the most part, people enjoy starting off zoomed in. The map view is offputting initially.
- When loading the comic strip, wasn't interested in it because it was zoomed out, "this is too small, it's not compelling"
Content & Content Format
- Strong feedback from two users about the content layout being unintuitive and extremely cumbersome for the article and recipe - they just want to consume it linearly.
- People enjoy the choose your own adventure
- Strong dislike of the recipe project by one user for being non-linear
- Mixed reactions on layout of the Yam Fries recipe, too non-linear for some
- Enjoyed learning about Anna Atkins
- People like the comic
- Needle path was often cited as the best application of this navigation method
- Works well for the story, but feels like a niche application
What would you make?
- A choose your own adventure story
- Guides, instructions & tutorials for a product that I work on
- I would make a story
- I would make a maze
- A comic or a board game
- My husband would probably make something about cars
- I wouldn't make anything, but among people I know - a lot of them might try to use this format to make a picture collage or board with their instagram photos
- DIY guides or instructions might work well
- Maybe infographics
xmatthewx
lauradereynal
see fledgling testing plan #1527