ABOUT THE PROJECT
When did I join the Jooay team?
Upon joining the research team at McGill University, I found that they had already completed a literature review and hypothesized that gamification could enhance retention. They conducted interviews with six youths with disabilities and six parents to gather their perspectives on the current app and gamification features.
What is the app about?
Jooay is an app designed for youth with disabilities, making it easier for them and their parents to discover nearby activities and programs within their community.
Problem
While the app sees a strong rate of new user installations, its retention rate is low
Outcome
My research revealed that the primary issue with the app was not lack of gamification, but it was the lack of features like an advanced filtering and search options that caused users' frustration, resulting a low rate of retention. Adding these features significantly increased user satisfaction, as evidenced by the usability test results.
OVEVIEW
Role
UX Researcher and Designer (case study highlighting my UX research expertise).
Team
1 Product Manager, 2 UX Designers, 2 Accessibility Experts, 2 Developers & Me
Timeline
6 months
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Zoom, Google Suite
CLIENT
Jooay
Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre
INFO
What were the primary issues with the app?
I began my research by identify existing usability issues in the app, using Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics.
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
Key Findings:
Some primary issues I discovered include the lack of an efficient filtering and search option, inadequate visualization, and inappropriate font size.
ANALYZING MARKET
Understanding the opportunities
After finding issues in the existing app, I conducted a competitive analysis to understand how other similar apps address these problems and uncover potential opportunities for improvement in our design.
Understanding users' needs-Interview analysis and focus group
After identifying the app’s issues, I utilized affinity diagram approach to analyze the transcriptions provided by the McGill research team, uncovering users’ needs, pain points, and expectations.
USER RESEARCH FINDINGS
Challenge
I identified biases in some interview questions that influenced users to express a need for gamification features, like goal setting. To address this, I proposed redoing the interviews, but it was declined due to time constraints. Instead, after developing low-fidelity prototypes, I recommended conducting focus groups to gain deeper insights into users' perspectives on the features identified during the initial interview analysis.
Parents
Youth
PERSONA
Understanding our design audience
After identifying users’ needs and understanding the market landscape, I created personas for both parents and youth to deeply understand and empathize with our users and to ensure the design addresses the specific needs of each user group.
Why did I create a journey map for parents?
JOURNEY MAP
Due to the challenges in designing the parents' account process, I decided to create a journey map to better understand their needs and frustrations, ensuring that my design decisions would directly address and improve their experience.
USABILITY TEST- PHASE ONE
How do our users (youth) think?
Based on the research finding recommendations, the UX designers of the team and I created a mid-fidelity prototype, which we then tested with a group of users to gather feedback on its usability and overall user experience.
Users wondered if they could follow someone without first being friends. Their question brought to our attention the need to replace the "follow" option with "send friend request" to facilitate a more personal connection between users.
Based on one user's suggestion to find friends of friends to expand their relationships, I recommended adding a section to show people with similar interests.
Users had difficulty finding the assigned activity(Book club) within the categories and wanted to search for it. However, locating the search icon took time.
Therefore, I suggested replacing the search icon with a search bar directly in the application's header. This change aims to enhance the visibility and accessibility of the search function, making it more intuitive and user-friendly.
I faced a challenge when I proposed categorizing activities for easier navigation, but one of my team members did not initially accept this idea, fearing it would require too many clicks. To find the best solution, I asked users to locate a specific activity in the list.
Users’ difficulty in completing the task, along with their suggestion for categorized options, led us to design a search function that allows users to search through categories and subcategories.
NEXT STEPS
What am I currently do?
I am currently conducting usability tests with parents to identify areas for improvement in our mid-fidelity design.
What is the next steps?
After creating a high-fidelity prototype, I will conduct the second phase of usability tests with both user groups to further refine and validate the design.