<aside> đź‘€ Overview Method Findings & Recommendations Conclusion
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We did not get a lot of feedback regarding the acceptability and understandability of the design for our web-based app in Milestone 4. After speaking to our classmates, we reached out to creative small businesses to test the content and interaction design of Creatively. We conducted think-aloud sessions as a means of assessing usability. We did not move forward with standard usability testing because the user scenarios we have prototyped for our app require a participant to input specific information with limited flexibility to explore the app. For example, the onboarding phase of our user experience requires specific answers. We believe think-aloud sessions were a better fit for our evaluation needs as they can reveal “aspects of an interface that delight, confuse, and frustrate” (Martin et al. 2012, p. 180). We believed that think-aloud sessions can provide more fluid conversation rather than having a set task list that looks at success or failure.
Our goals for think-aloud sessions are to explore and evaluate the following dimensions of user acceptability:
We conducted concurrent think-aloud sessions with two creative small business owners because we wanted to get live feedback on “what is [currently] happening” (Martin et al. 2012, p. 180) in the user experience. We recruited participants by reaching out to the network of small business owners we interviewed previously (see Milestone 3). We were limited to only two creative small business owners as we had limited funding and wanted to fairly compensate participants for their time. Each session was 60 minutes in length and conducted via Zoom so that we could record and share our prototype’s screen. Participants were shown the high-fidelity prototypes via Figma in accordance with how our two user scenarios would experience Creatively. Participants were instructed to interject at any time with any thoughts or feelings they had about each screen or experience between screens.
Adjustment made: Design screens that pause and explain each subpart of the onboarding experience as well as opportunities for users to skip some parts of onboarding to come back at a later time - Evidence 2. Participants were sometimes confused about the written directions given by the web-based app
Adjustment made: Insert more, quick sentences explaining some of the app screens’ headings - Evidence 3. Participants were excited about the pricing calculator and wanted more data on how to interpret recommended prices that contextualize the business over time
Consideration made: Include data visualization as a sub-feature in the pricing calculator - Evidence
Due to the timeline and prioritizing the goals of the minimum viable product, we decided that data visualization could a be future feature for upcoming versions of Creatively.
Conducting two think-aloud sessions as a means for evaluating Creatively effectively addressed our concerns regarding the length of the onboarding survey, content design, and interaction design. We acknowledge that every creative has a unique experience, but due to the timeline, we decided to test one linear flow with set inputs.
Though our findings indicate important changes to be made to improve our web-based app, resoundingly positive sentiment was shared across the two sessions expressing excitement and longing for Creatively to be a tool that could be actualized for creative small businesses.
The next steps include finalizing our product with the adjustments while also considering the validation that we are on the right track.