Background: In the Spring of 2019, I designed the “Perspective” project as part of my capstone course for the University of Michigan UX Research and Design Specialization.

The capstone prompt challenged students to “conduct a multi-stage user experience project” and leverage the resulting insights to  “design a product from scratch”.

Project Goal: Help build a contextual understanding of personal media consumption by empowering users with tools for managing, navigating and analyzing online media content.

UX Skills: Study Design, Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Personas and Scenarios, Prototyping, Affinity Diagram, Wireframes, Storyboarding, Usability Tests.

Overview

Over the course of five weeks, I conducted research and iterated on prototypes using a variety of methods.

I drafted a project proposal, analyzed competitors, recruited study participants, conducted semi-structured interviews, and generated affinity diagrams in order to produce a Needs Finding Report. Report components include a detailed description of Users’ Needs, Users’ current practices, functional requirements and constraints.

I generated personas to highlight user needs, scenarios to contextualize key tasks, and storyboards to illustrate key interactions. Using a lo-fi prototype, I designed and conducted a small-scale Usability Test. Analysis of interview question responses and Users’ performance on Task Scenarios contributed to a med-fi prototype (wireframes).

I performed a Heuristic Evaluation on the wireframes and used the resulting recommendations to generate a final, interactive prototype. Using the interactive prototype, I conducted a Remote Usability Test and synthesized the results into a final User Test Report.

I created a Final Report (including documentation of process, key findings, and next steps) to conclude the project.

The Problem

Information overload…. Awash in a sea of notifications.

Digital media plays an increasingly central role in modern life, but it's hard to know what’s what.

• How do we know what deserves our attention?

• How do we keep track of what is important? 

• What can be done to help distinguish signal from noise?

The challenges users face in navigating and filtering digital media content are many.

The nonstop pace of modern media ecosystems makes it hard to “zoom out”, and users have few tools to help facilitate a macro-level understanding (‘big picture”) of their own media consumption.

Project Goals

• Help build a contextual understanding of personal media consumption by empowering users with tools for managing, navigating and analyzing online media content.

• Showcase UX methodology skillset (Prototyping, Semi-structured interviews, User Testing).

Primary Research Questions

What types of tools will best enable users to navigate and contextualize their own media diet?

• How do users in my target population organize and keep track of media content they consume online?

• What goals, values, needs and constraints inform how and why users in my population save and organize online digital media content?

• What tools or techniques, if any, do respondents use to save or keep track of information they find online?

• What tools or techniques, if any, do respondents use to share content they have found online with others?

• What types of things do respondents do with content they find online and save for later?

Process

Tools

Miro, Balsamiq, Temi, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Quicktime, Skype, Voice Memos App, Adobe Illustrator

Design Goals

• Empower users with tools for managing, navigating and analyzing online media content.

• Integrate with and complement existing user practices for sharing, storing and saving.

• Provide functionality that is above and beyond that of existing services in adjacent product categories.

• Improve users’ signal-to-noise-ratio.

Design Principles

• Simplicity

• Accessibility

• Compatibility

• Narrative rather than raw data

UX Challenges

1. Small sample sizes for the Needs Finding Study (n=4) and Usability Tests (n=6) made it difficult to judge the prevalence of users’ perceptions and extrapolate findings.

2. Convenience Sampling resulted in feedback biased by previous relationships. For the same reason, sample composition was likely not representative of target demographic. (8 of 10 participants were male, for example.)

3. Limitations of PDF prototype format influenced users’ test experience.

4. Interactive prototypes failed to work in one session.

Remote Usability Tests

• I conducted remote usability tests with (6) participants over the course of two separate weeks.

• Participants were recruited via convenience sample and verified as within the target demographic via screener questionnaire.

• During the test, I collected quantitative data (task completion rate, time on task) regarding performance and qualitative data (users’ quotes and my observations) regarding preference.

Outcomes

A comprehensive project report, including documentation of process, key findings, recommendations and next steps.

Reflection

What did I learn?

The Final Prototype User Test served as a useful exploration into how potential users within the target population might perceive and interact with a system like Perspective.

Some of Perspective’s proposed functionality is complex in nature, and therefor outside of the scope of a Prototype Usability Test. Additional User Tests with a different prototype medium could help to provide further valuable insights.

• Setting expectations regarding prototype fidelity is important.

• As a prototype medium, clickable PDFs are useful but limited.

• Explicit, detailed instructions are required for successful Remote User Testing.

What would I do differently?

Leveraging a participant recruitment service would help to alleviate bias introduced by convenience sampling. Including segments of the target population that were underrepresented in the Needs Findings Study, Micro-Usability Test and Final Prototype User Test would also help to provide a more complete picture of user needs and practices. (8 out of 10 study of study participants were male, for example.) In regards to remote usability testing strategy, a web-based prototype medium would likely be more reliable than a PDF prototype. (Some PDF viewer applications cause links to fail.)