I have continued developing my language-learning app (I have since named “Glyph”) to experience the design thinking process. At this stage, I have built my first wireframe within Marvel (a rapid prototyping tool), transferred it to Figma (per a fellow designer’s recommendation to switch to an industry-standard tool), and written a usability test script. I scripted five tasks for my test participants to complete to see how they instinctively navigated throughout the application. This allowed me to identify what worked, where the glaring errors were, and what needs were not being met. I have summarized my most significant learnings from my experience below.
1. Stay on paper until you’ve thrown out many ideas
There were so many low-hanging fruits that I could have identified early on if I had iterated on paper for longer. I only sketched 1-2 ideas for each page before constructing a rapid prototype in Marvel. The most glaring thing I overlooked was within one of the memory games. This was a recall game where the user sees a word in the language they are studying and must recall the English translation. However, my first iteration included an image of the word in question. Very early on, I had a test user point out that having a picture of the word (in this case, it was a fish) gave away the answer. I had overlooked this in my initial sketches and thinking. This example segues nicely into my next point.
2. Get eyes on your work early (and often)
All of my reading had told me as much, but my proper understanding of this came when I began asking people to review my work. I found the experience very humbling, as I had to confront many silly mistakes I made and a lot of significant errors that escaped my foresight.
Since this is my first project to immerse myself in the UX design process, I went step by step and slowly – intentionally not blending the categories of research and wireframe and prototype. A future me will hopefully get eyes on my wireframes as soon as I’ve identified most of the “bad” ideas. A skill that comes with time and practice is knowing when to involve users and when to sort out the ideas to present. I will now adamantly subscribe to the “involve your users early and often” adage.
3. More small tests > one comprehensive test
Not knowing the first thing about conducting usability tests, I consulted the Nielsen Norman Group and found an article that discusses why five testers is an ideal number – as unique error findings tend to decrease as you test more people. I followed their advice and recruited five participants. Above is a photo of my friend Jeffrey, my fifth usability test participant. I had already received a small mountain of feedback (a lot of it repeated) from my first four testers, so I decided to make those edits before conducting one last test. This proved to be incredibly useful, and I found myself very glad I followed the second piece of advice from Jakob Nielsen:
“After creating the new design, you need to test again. Even though I said that the redesign should “fix” the problems found in the first study, the truth is that you think that the new design overcomes the problems.”
Jakob Nielsen
I learned that I was no exception. In trying to address some errors in previous tests, I came up with a solution that fell flat in my final usability test. Even with a sample size of one in version 2.0, I could see the value of generating more small tests than an extensive, singular test.
4. Know the value and purpose of feedback
One of the more difficult parts of facilitating these usability tests was that I wanted to defend my decisions. This was especially true when the individual I recruited was a close friend. I felt an almost knee-jerk reaction to respond defensively about why my design was actually “good.” I took the feedback personally as though it were an attack. There is undoubtedly a time and place for defending design decisions, though usability testing is investigating what can and should be improved. Luckily, I could take this opportunity to learn about my tendencies and identify an area for substantial growth within myself.
So there you have it: my five biggest takeaways from testing my prototype. I learned a lot about the design process and myself and where I can grow. I know this is more of a reflection on my learning journey, but I hope this helps you get your work/skills/passions in front of others – UX or otherwise!