About the project
The purpose of this project is to apply various usability methods and find usability issues with the What's Up app and provide recommendations to improve the app. The usability tests helped us to address and discover problems users had when using the What's Up app.
What’s Up is an app developed to provide mental support to users who need help coping with emotions. To make sure it’s easy to find the appropriate support, we wanted to understand how easy it is to navigate the app and find the intended information users are looking for.
What’s Up is an app developed to provide mental support to users who need help coping with emotions. To make sure it’s easy to find the appropriate support, we wanted to understand how easy it is to navigate the app and find the intended information users are looking for.
My Role
I worked as a usability analyst with two of my team members. I contributed in carrying out activities like conducting user interviews, analyzing quantitative data, to communicate findings and recommendations. This project was a part of Usability Evaluation Methods course at DePaul University.
Target Audience
Anyone who can relate to exact one of the following:
- Age: Above the age of 21 years
- Has used mental health apps before
- Has positive perception about using apps for emotional health
- Has experience coping with emotions (anger, depression, stress, managing worries)
Test objectives and obtained results
Can users successfully complete activities?
A portion of the participants could not complete activities successfully. Insufficient instructions on how to proceed with activities caused users to get stuck.
Can users navigate and find information about different ways to cope with their emotions?
There is difficulty in finding and navigating to the information. Unclear and inconsistent navigation methods caused some participants to fail finding the desired information.
How helpful are the contents and information provided for coping with emotions?
Participants found the contents and information somewhat helpful. The average score was 4.6 with the lowest of score of 3 and highest of 6.
Can users easily make configurations to the app settings?
All participants found it easy to find the setting and make configurations.
Other concerns
For task 2, diary entry all participants felt the information on the pop-up was overwhelming. All participants had to read popup with heavy information to check mark the patterns. Going back and forth using popups was a repetitive step for the participants.
Methods and Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
To improve the effectiveness of the method, we independently carried out heuristic evaluation to check for usability principles violations (Nielsen-Molich’s principles) and provided recommendations to fix them. Aggregating our results, we rated the issues found based on severity of the issue.
While rating, we considered three factors into account.
While rating, we considered three factors into account.
Cognitive Walkthrough
The main goal for doing cognitive walkthrough was to understand system's learnability and identify points of confusion for the most frequent tasks performed by users when using the app.
Interviews
We used exploratory test to identify point of confusion and efficiency of the What's Up app. Participants performed 8 tasks and we gathered data about the success and failure rates. Through this test we gathered qualitative data that helped us determine whether users can easily find and utilize the app’s resources.
The test took place in a controlled environment remotely. We used Zoom to record participants interviews for reference after the study. Participants used mobile phones with working internet connection during the test.
The test took place in a controlled environment remotely. We used Zoom to record participants interviews for reference after the study. Participants used mobile phones with working internet connection during the test.
Comparision Study
In order to understand What’s Up app’s competitiveness in the market, we conducted a comparative study against another well-received mental health app, Sanvello. Our goal was to find if there were any usability differences between What's Up and Sanvello.
Specifically, we measured our participants ease of use and enjoyment of these applications. Based on our study, we found no significant usability differences in our participants reaction to these activities they performed within the apps.
About Sanvello app: Sanvello is a digital self-care app for managing stress, anxiety, and depression. The app provides activities, articles, community and even expert support to help users cope with their emotional and mental health.
Specifically, we measured our participants ease of use and enjoyment of these applications. Based on our study, we found no significant usability differences in our participants reaction to these activities they performed within the apps.
About Sanvello app: Sanvello is a digital self-care app for managing stress, anxiety, and depression. The app provides activities, articles, community and even expert support to help users cope with their emotional and mental health.
Identified issues and recommendations for the app
Based on our findings from these usability tests, we have compiled a list of suggestions that can help address the identified issues.
Severity 3 issues
These issues are important and need to be fixed as soon as possible. Most findings in this category have issues with “Visibility of system status”.
Problem 1
Description
The heart icon (bottom left on the “UpliftingQuotes” screen) does not provide distinction for quotes that have been marked as favorite by the user.
Justification
Because distinction is not provided for favorited quotes, it’ll cause confusion for users later when they want to remember which ones they marked as favorite.
Recommendation
Provide a distinction on the heart icon for quotes that users marked as favorite.
Problem 2
Description
There is no indication that user needs to swipe horizontally to see contents in the next page.
Justification
Users will think there is only one page and miss additional contents that can be found by swiping horizontally.
Recommendation
Consider adding arrow buttons or page indicator on the page to show that there are more contents to the side.
Problem 3
Description
Only the icon is tappable in the Settings menu item. The text, which has more real estate is not tappable.
Justification
Users are used to tapping on the entire row to access menus. It would be confusing for users if they can’t tap on the text. They might think the entire button doesn’t work.
Recommendation
Make entire row item (icon + text) tappable.
Severity 2 issue
These issues are problematic but do not hinder users from using the app. It is highly recommended to fix these issues once Severity 3 issues are resolved. Issues in this category are related to “Discoverability”.
Problem 4
Description
It is not clear how to go through the activity. The instructions are hidden in the Question mark icon on the top right of the screen, but this is also not apparent to the user that instructions can be found there.
Justification
Users will not know how to go through this activity and thus not experience the full benefit of this app.
Recommendation
Consider one of the following:
- add an interstitial as soon as the user enters the screen
- provide the instruction on the body of the page
- provide an instruction page before starting the activity
Severity 1 issues
These issues are minor and have the least impact on usability. However, they are still visible and may influence users’ overall perception of the app and so it is recommended to fix them once all other important issues are resolved.
Problem 5
Description
Adding new entry to the Diary is hard to find as there is no label of ‘adding entry’ until the user reaches at the final step.
Justification
It impacts the efficiency, as users get confused how to add new entry without any visibility of the label on the initial steps. These can create errors landing users to different screens and not the intended one.
Recommendation
Consider adding ‘add new entry’ in the text description of ‘My Diary’ button. Another option is to do a major navigational change in the app mentioning ‘add entry’ in the home page itself.
Problem 6
Description
Its possible to change the color palette of both, body and text to be the same color.
Justification
This may cause user frustration if they accidently choose the same color for both text and background.
Recommendation
Disallow light+light or dark+dark color palettes changes.
Problem 7
Description
Text alignment is not consistent. Some screens show text center-aligned whereas others show text left-aligned.
Justification
Inconsistent text- alignment can negatively impact perception of the app’s quality. Center-alignment also makes it more difficult to read than a left-aligned paragraph.
Recommendation
Make all text be left-aligned so that it's easier to read.
Problem 8
Description
Too much text used in each content screens. It's difficult to engage users if only text is used.
Justification
It unpleasing to see just the texts and might decrease the user engagement with the app.
Recommendation
Consider providing interactive features and/or more images to make absorbing content more enjoyable.
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