Development and validation of research app
Client: UPIC research group
My role: UX researcher
Team: Project manager, project coordinator, app developer, graphic designer
Background
The UPIC research group at Uppsala University wanted to develop a healthcare data collection app to gather data on young women's mental wellbeing.
The app collects ecological momentary assessment data from users using surveys, smartphone sensors, logs and metadata.
Challenge
App-based data collection is an increasingly popular approach to healthcare research, however, very little effort has been made to adopt an user-centered design process for these apps, and to validate these apps to have a formative influence.
These are expensive projects, and having a user-centered development approach would lead to lower levels of missing data and participant loss, thereby enhancing the quality of data collected.
Goals
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Develop a plan for a user-centered, iterative development process for the research team.
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Get insights on target user's preferences, priorities, and concerns.
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Ideate and design a prototype for the UPIC research app with target users.
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Evaluate the app with users to identify pain points, concerns, as well as facilitators to inform a redesign.
Constraints
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Projects in academic settings typically have a much longer expected timeframe due to the bureaucratic nature of universities, ethical approval boards, and research funding bodies.
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Restrictions in how users can be included and what information can be collected from them, and the project's capacity to adopt a long-term iterative design approach.
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Designers and developers are working part-time on such projects, and so have limited time to collaborate and apply changes.
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The insights and recommendations from this UX research needed to be practical and feasible with these constraints in mind.
PROCESS
Kickoff meeting
Participants: project coordinator, project manager, app developer, ux researcher (myself)
Meeting goals:
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Familiarize myself with project, expected timeline.
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Get a good grasp on the team's vision for the app, their preferences, priorities and goals, as well as concerns.
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Establish a user recruitment protocol.
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Outline any limitations and constraints for ux research and app design from a practical, ethical or legal perspective.
Outcomes:
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Competitor analysis: project team had completed a cursory competitive analysis which resulted in ideas for new features and designs. Most competitor apps were very simple in design and function. Based on this, we outlined a basic structure of what the team envisioned the app to contain based on their needs.
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Constraints identified: App developer briefed us on the various design and programming limitations given the research platform that was to be used. Project team outlined ethical and time constraints.
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Recruitment for uxr: project team has pool of interested participants who will participate in the co-design process. Participants for usability testing will be recruited via advertising on campus and via social media.
Feature ideation workshop
Participants: 5 end-user representatives (women aged 15-30), project coordinator, ux researcher (myself)
Goals:
1. Ideate potential features
2. Sort ideas by priority and preference
3. Develop ideas for features and pages further
Process:
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We did a rapid ideation round where participants were encouraged to come up with as many ideas as they could for feature concepts and to build on eachothers ideas.
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Ideas were put onto cards that the participants sorted as a group into what they considered 'very important', 'good-to-have', and to 'avoid'.
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Very important and good-to-have feature concepts were put on a board, and participants did round-robin brainstorming to further develop the functions and properties of those features.
Rapid feature ideation results
Card sorting to prioritize features, as well as identify what to avoid when conceptualizing features
Extract of mind map constructed from round-robin brainstorming to shape feature concepts further
MVP prioritization
Participants: project manager, project coordinator, ux researcher (myself)
Goal: Determine which features and functions are valuable and important for an MVP prototype.
Process and outcomes:
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I facilitated creating a prioritization matrix to identify which features concepts to include in an MVP prototype based on user value and feasibility.
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We sketched wireframes for the top ranking features concepts to brainstorm ideas how how they might take form. These sketches were used in further design and prototyping workshops with participants to get their impressions.
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Participants were encouraged to try and find inspirations from other apps they like to use for such features to help them ideate.
Prioritization matrix activity with project members with emotes for further discussion.
Participants were shown wireframe sketches for various screens and functions, and were asked to share first impressions and critical feedback.
We encouraged them to try and find inspirations from other apps they like to use for such features to create a reference point and help them ideate.
Brand design
Participants: 5 end user representatives (women aged 15-30), ux researcher (myself), graphic designer
Goal: identify user preferences and perspectives on interface design concept, typography, and logo.
Process and outcomes: We had a semi-structured discussion on the wireframe sketches and discussed participants preferences and perspectives regarding the visual style and branding of the app, including sketching ideas for a logo.
Logos, color palettes and typographies based on the group's preferences were presented at the next meeting, and the group discussed which seems like the best choice. We established design principles to carry forward.
We started with brainstorming adjectives for what the app should and should not be. Adjectives that fell somewhere in between were listed separately for further discussion.
Participants came up with keywords to describe the color scheme of the app, and color concepts to draw inspiration from.
The graphic designer developed various color palettes based on those discussions, and participants showed a clear preference for the one above.
Participants came up with keywords and concepts to ideate a logo concept, sketched rough ideas for logos.
Top-ranked were developed into logo designs by the graphic designer. Participants unanimously chose the one above, and also discussed text placement.
Participants selected the typeface above in bold form from various choices. Dyslexia-adapted fonts were thought to be "too comic-sans" and "not serious". Better to be optional in the app settings for those who want.
Prototyping
Participants: app developer, graphic designer, ux researcher (myself)
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Goal: develop an MVP interactive prototype
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Outcome: We held a series of design sprints to sketch low fidelity prototypes for all pages, components, and flows to iteratively develop an interactive prototype.
Moderated
usability testing
Participants: 10 participants representing the end user group. Participants were recruited via social media ads, fliers placed around the university, and word of mouth.
Goal: evaluate prototype to identify pain points, barriers, facilitators and concerns users may have in order to refine app before launch.
Process:
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Participants were given moderated remote usability tests on Maze. Participants had to complete a 14 tasks while thinking aloud, and were continuously prompted to do so with probing questions.
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These tasks were determined based on consulations with both our end user co-design group, and the researcher team.
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We measured participant's error rate, number of actions, task completion time.
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Participants were asked probing and clarifying questions both during the test session and afterwards.
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Subjective cognitive load of each task was assessed via the Subjective Mental Effort Questionnaire.
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Participants were given the UEQ+ as we were especially interested in evaluating the percieved attractiveness, efficiency, stimulation and trust aspects of the app, among other secondary elements.
Results from think aloud session and follow up interviews were categorized into two levels of themes, based on the main feature/function, and aspects of usability.
Long-term
usage trends
Goal: the research team wants to investigate how to optimize user experience, and improve engagement and retention over time. Additionally, we want to generate valuable insights to support ongoing development efforts. This is an ongoing stage.
Process:
I am acquiring data regarding app usage patterns from 84 real app users over 4 months starting at sign-up. I will analyze trends regarding:
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Frequency of app usage and time spent on app: how often users used the app, average duration of app sessions, and total time spent on app on a weekly basis.
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Survey completion rates: identify if certain survey topics are more engaging or relevant to participants, if there are any drop-off points in surveys.
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Sensor data consent patterns
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Feature engagement: identify which features are most accessed and utilized to help prioritize feature development and improve user experience
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Retention rates
IMPACT
1. Close collaboration with the project team has allowed me to establish a long-term user research strategy to ensure continued user involvement in design and an iterative design cycle.
2. The design principles we established with our end user reference group are hung up on our office wall. It is important for both researchers and design team to keep them in mind when going forward with developments.
3. The co-design strategies and methodologies I used were time-efficient, and could be done remotely, which allowed a more diverse group of end-user representatives to participate.
4. Insights gathered from usability tests led to key adaptations made for accessibility for various features, and improvements for interactive features via both refinements and new ideas.
5. Usage trend mapping will follow users both before and after we implement app changes based on insights gathered. This will quanitify and validate the changes made and create a basis for further funding applications.
6. Although it is still ongoing, we have seen an increase in user engagement with the diary and statistics feature by 38%, as well as an increase in completion rates of surveys by 54%.