We used many methods to effectively improve and work on our product.
Contextual Interviews- Contextual interviews are a way to gain insight from users while observing them more than directly asking questions. Each team member did three of these interviews and took notes on what their findings were. We gave the users information about our reason for choosing them and the purpose of the interview. The majority of the interviews were spent on observing how our users used their current favorite job website and the features that were important to them. We asked the users at the end of what they liked and disliked about the current website they were using.
Low-Fidelity Prototyping- Low fidelity prototypes are low cost prototypes that focus more on the big picture rather than the details. This prototype was not clickable and we did not worry too much on the appearance. We used this to include some screens that we thought would be important for our website to have. We also created a video explaining our product and the different screens.
High-Fidelity Prototyping- High fidelity prototypes are more expensive and do focus a bit on appearance. We still wanted to keep the pages simple so as to not distract the user. We made this version clickable and added new screens. We also made connections between the screens so the user could move about our website. We also made changes to make the websites look more cohesive such as making filters the same size.
High Fidelity User Testing- Each member of the team interviewed two users. The users tested our high fidelity prototype with some direction tasks to do. They then provided their thoughts on what they liked and any improvements can be made. We used this method to gain insight from the users so we could implement changes in our final design.
Limitations- The limitations we encountered were having to interview people that we may have already known. This was done because the interviews and prototyping had to be done in an online environment. As COVID-19 was still a concern we worked as a team online using Discord for communication, Miro and Jamboard for brainstorming, Figma for prototyping, and Zoom for recording videos.