Usability Testing

We conducted 3 usability tests in this step on our Lo-Fi prototype. The subjects are a Dartmouth undergrad student, a Dartmouth grad student, and a non-Dartmouth undergrad student. They are all our target potential users, and they have different cooking frequency and cooking preference.

Here is one of the usability testing reports:

The test subject was a Dartmouth undergraduate senior who cooks on a daily basis while he is back at home. He has a deep interest in cooking and has felt that finding good new recipes has always been a challenge for him. On the technology end, he is very much a typical user who has familiarity with a variety of apps but is not someone with any sort of expertise in app development or UI/UX design. The usability testing was conducted with the participant and one member of the group. He was provided with a brief description of what the app was trying to accomplish but was not provided with detailed instructions on how to use the app. The participant was, however, told that the “up” and “down” buttons on the discovery page were to mimic a more traditional scrolling interface.

The three tasks that were evaluated were: to discover the lobster roll recipe and successfully go through the recipe, to access the advanced filter function of the app, and to figure out how to redirect himself to the hyperlinks for the ingredients on the ingredients page of the ramen recipe. The test measures being assessed were: overall errors to complete task, successful completion of the task, and time needed to complete the task.

For the first task, the participant conducted the task without any problems or obstacles. The participant was able to realize that the “discover” page could be navigated with the scroll bar and found the lobster roll recipe. He also realized quickly that the “continue” arrow button was used to access the recipe. From then on, all the participant had to do was tap on the next button repeatedly until he reached the actual recipe. Once at the “steps” portion of the app, the participant realized that there were no navigational buttons, so he tapped on the right side of the screen expecting that this was the way to navigate between steps. This was correct and the participant navigated to the end of the lobster roll recipe. The participant also completed the task in 1 minute and 47 seconds, which was around 15 seconds longer than what it took the team to complete the task. Seeing that the participant would not have been used to the prototype, this time was extremely good. In terms of the test measures, the participant did not commit any errors during the task, completed the task successfully, and completed the task in good time.

For the second task, which was to access the advanced filters menu, the participant was able to complete the task with flying colors. According to the participant’s “think out loud'' process, the filter icon was very visible on the discovery page and it only required a cursory look from the participant to find the filter icon, click on it, then navigate to the advanced filter page easily. The participant did not commit any errors and completed the task successfully. In terms of time, it took the participant around 25 seconds to complete the task. Though this may be a bit long as the task could be completed in two button clicks, it took a long time as the participant had to take in all the information that was presented on the screen.

The last task was where the participant encountered errors. As the participant was able to navigate through the first task, it took the participant very little time to navigate to the ingredients page of the ramen recipe. However, once there, the participant was confused as to what he had to do. He pressed the “next” and “back” buttons repeatedly trying to find the button that would redirect the participant to the Walmart page for the ingredients listed. He then thought out loud that “maybe (he) should click on the names of the ingredients to see what happens.” This allowed him to successfully complete the task. However, he encountered six errors and took 1:54 to complete the task. In addition, the participant was only able to complete the task due to luck and brute-forcing the problem. As such, the third and last task should be seen as a failure.

From the results of this usability test, it is clear that some aspects of our UI/UX design were very user-friendly, but other features that are not explained well enough were not as good. For example, navigating through the discovery page, the icons on the discovery page, and accessing the recipes were simple and easy to follow even for a user that had never used our app before. This was mostly due to using recognizable icons for our buttons, which allowed any user that was familiar with mobile applications to navigate through our app without any major problems. However, when it came to one of our hidden features, the accessing of our hyperlinks for ingredients, the participant struggled. When not prompted, any potential users may not be able to find this feature easily. As such, a solution to this problem may be to have a tutorial when the user first opens the app to outline its features and how to access them.