Case Study
Usability and engagement in Who's Down App
When I first joined The Who's Down team as a designer, one of my first priorities was evaluating the app design and identifying opportunities for improvement. Based on my findings, I redesign the old screens of the app to improve usability.
The research space
Who's down is an event management platform that aims to support real-world social connections by connecting people through events. The primary focus of this app at the time I joined was college students, and my research was focused on first evaluating the usability of the app, and then conducting formative research to understand the needs of college student populations, with respect to connecting with others and events. I was particularly interested in how they learnt about events, and the factors that determined their interest in attending events.
Old screens
Research questions
How easily are people able to use key features of the app?
What challenges do students face in connecting with others
What factors shape student' engagement in events
Usability Testing
The highest priority at the time was ensuring that the app was usable in the first place, and so I conducted a usability study with 5 participants who we recruited with snowball sampling. In the testing session, I observed participants carry out 6 tasks that relied on the key functionalities of the app, and measured the success of the design through participants' expression of frustration, confusion, the time it took to complete tasks and number of errors recorded.
I analyzed the data from the testing sessions using affinity mapping, supplemented with the quantitative insights about time spent on tasks, and number of errors observed during the testing sessions. From this analysis, four key points of friction were identified:
Filtering
Users struggled to identify and use the filter and sort buttons
Navigation
Users occasionally struggle to revert actions, or find the different pages for tasks
Date/time
Date/time information is not clear to users and they did not understand how to filter by date.
Consistency
Users found icons and buttons confusing. Button states lacked consistency, and some buttons were hard to identify.
User Interviews
The key design focus at this time was redesigning the app to more usable but also to improve the experience for users. Consequently, I thought it was important to understand better what needs the app sought to fulfill in college students. To this end, I ran 5 user
interviews with college students, also recruited with snowball sampling since we had limited resources. In these interviews, I discussed with potential users about how they learn about events on campus, their motivations to attend, and also gauged their interest in the product. I analyzed the findings
From these interviews, I unearthed 3 key insights:
Who is going matters
One of the most important factors that determine participants' interest in events is if their friends will be present. They will sometimes go to an event just to connect with friends.
Info sources are email & wom
Participants largely hear about events through their social networks via word of mouth, although they receive daily emails about events on campus.
Event planning is spontaneous
College students are not big planners - while there are occasions where groups plan to attend events together, the more common scenario is learning about something last-minute and showing up.
Redesign
The key insights from the user testing research and user interviews, combined with the rebranding information I received from the team shaped my redesign of the app. In my redesign, I sought to make the app more specific to the user, and minimize points of user friction, in order to increase event attendance and awareness.
The redesign was extensive and changed many elements of the old design; below are 3 of the key design decisions I made and the insights that informed them.
Users need personalized event suggestions
The user interview highlighted that users get information about events from their social network, which makes it more relevant to them and increases their chances of showing up
Users struggle with filtering by date
Users had trouble using the 'time travel' feature - used to filter by date - in the user testing exercise, which suggested that the feature was unclear to them
Users struggle with navigating between pages
When asked to go to specific pages or navigate to previous pages, users exhibited difficulty understanding where relevant pages were. This was because the app had both navigation bar and a general menu.
Transforming the home page to a dashboard
To support this, I designed a dashboard that suggests relevant events to users based on their interests and also the events that their friends have RSVPd to. This way users only see relevant events first.
Using a calendar system for date filtering
To make it more apparent how to filter by date, I replaced the feature with a calendar system that immediately indicated which dates the events were for and allowed users to easily switch dates
Simplifying navigation menu
To address this, I simplified the navigation system by including all relevant information in the navigation bar, labelling icons, and eliminating the additional menu. This way users could easily identify the page they were on.
Reflection
Because this project was carried out with an upcoming start up, we faced many constraints in terms of time, resources and availability of resources. Nonetheless I think we were able to develop some key understanding of our potential user group. However, these designs still have to be validated by users, and tested on different user groups as the company explores different opportunities for user bases. I think the insights, particularly those from the user interview would be strengthened by quantifying them through a survey to justify making large design decisions based on them.