NM3221 Reflections

He essentially broke the UX methodology into five parts; being Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Even though we have gone through lectures back in school on the process, it's always nice to go back and revisit what we've learnt as there may be insights that we missed. The speaker gave particular emphasis on the user, as UX design is 100% user-centred, the designer has to pay attention to what the user sees, feels, hears, touch, etc, and thus, thorough empathising of the user and defining of the problem (or also known as user research) is important to not miss the mark when we design something. I find this particularly enlightening because we've always been so focused in doing digital applications that we may forget the other senses other than visual and touch. But during this webinar I realised that it is also as important to engage the users' other senses in order for them to really get into the experience of the product/service.

While we did not manage to go through activities for all of the 4 processes, we did a little design practice that allows us to demonstrate our newly acquired skills. We were tasked to create 8 sketches of a pizza takeaway app, 30 seconds for each screen. They should all be different ideas and be quick sketches, to avoid spending on one for too long.

Here are my 8 sketches; (inked it because I couldn’t scan it properly)

During this exercise, since we only are given 30 seconds to sketch all 8 ideas, I didn’t have the time to add a lot of elements onto the screens. And I think this was intentional as often times, we are always caught in the aesthetics of things that we may not really focus on the functionality or basics of the product. Thus, I think this is a great way to exercise creativity in a not so critical way. After the 8 sketches, we were tasked to choose one out of the 8 and create a flow out of it. I have chosen to do a scrolling image-based order flow, as it is something that the users don't have to go back and forth as opposed to some screens I've sketched which is a step-by-step process.

Here is my flow of the takeaway pizza app:

The flow prioritises the type of pizza by showing image first, the title and the price before tapping in to see further details. Only these three things are shown as there would be quite a few pizzas shown that may be an information overload to users. The users have also the choice to go into the Full Menu which I have included, in case users did not manage to find a pizza in the other categories such as Originals or Favourites. Once tapped in, users can choose the size, the crust and toppings, which the user understands its for the selected pizza.

One of them Ronald, hailing from the Netherlands, has years of experience working in-house, and then in an agency before jumping back into the corporate world as a design consultant in service design; with his portfolio ranging from Phillips to Shang-ri La. The other guest speaker was Reima, an agency designer from Ideactio.

They started off with their experiences in designing for service with first really defining what service means. To design for service does not necessarily mean to create a service but to work around the particular experience with whatever that happens before, within and after the experience. I feel we are often trying to segregate what design is with terms such as UX, UI and Service, but the one prominent and memorable thing that was touched that day was that Design does not segregate; it looks at people first; with their behaviours, emotions and beliefs surrounding them, and with this, designers would try and think, how might we create a pleasant experience that would evoke the right emotions? That is, whatever we have learnt in lecture echoes that statement.

As a student in a mobile interaction design module, the first thought might be what does service design have to do with any digital interactions? However, if we take out all the different nuances of the way we design, we are ultimately doing similar things: We design for solutions, we solve problems. Thus, I think looking through a service design lens is also very valuable as it allows designers to view the whole spaces collectively and think how we could make experiences flow cohesively together. Similarly, to design digital experiences, a designer has to look at whole behaviours, not just when the user is using the product, but what the user will do during the usage, or how will it affect the user's experience during that time.

The speakers also touched on how service design should be done with the intention of spreading joy and thoughtfulness. This is especially true as we often find ourselves trying to solve problems yet fail to invoke joy from our users. Something small could also drastically alter a user's experience and thus we need to understand how these emotions can be translated into memorable experiences for the users.

As a whole, we mainly focused on users who are interested in viewing and browsing books, and heavily zoomed into their browsing experience. We touched on two main user profiles, one who leisurely reads and is open to discovering books from different genres and the other a knowledge reader, who has specific titles, genres, or formats when searching for books. 

I personally think we made the discoverability of the genre section and the way readers find books much more easier than the previous design, however, perhaps we could have looked at a much different angle. During our presentation, we were asked a particular question which made me rethink our whole design process. 

“Why didn’t we focus on the section where the user is currently reading?”

And this stumps us because I thought it was very clear cut where we can access our current reads --in our “Shelf” tab. But perhaps it isn’t and it was just an assumption. Thus, we didn’t try to find out if what the reader need is just a simple icon to tap in the homepage section to go straight to their current read. 

Also, as an existing reader, I would know where to tap to go straight into the book I’m reading-- which is the circular icon on the tab bar below. However, I can understand that it may not be intuitive for new users; or existing users may not even know of this feature and continuously use the “Shelf” tab to access their current reads. 

We did not rethink the experience of viewing the e-reader as we find the interface very straightforward. However, for readers to navigate to the e-reader, perhaps we could design a different way to present this? Thus, I thought of apps we utilise every day and how they manage to depict shortcut navigation routes for users’ ease. Music and video apps came to mind as they have direct navigation for users to tap into the songs/videos currently playing. 

I thought perhaps we can sort of emulate the same thing and this is what I came up with: 

We could perhaps do a “Now Reading” strip where it’s clearly visible for readers to tap and go into their current read instead of a circular icon with just an image of the book cover (like the previous design) as it will be more intuitive and it mimics what people are accustomed to. 

What I have learnt

Task 1: Finding a specific genre

For new users:

(1) Open Libby App (2) Search for  the ‘Romance’ genre (3) Find a book that is in the ‘Romance’ and ‘Fiction’ genre

We found that finding the ‘genre’ section is quite difficult due to the way the homepage was being arranged. The discoverability of the genre section is quite low and when the user manages to click into the page, it shows a generic ‘romance’ genre but fails to tell the user that besides that genre, it nested other genres such as ‘fiction’, ‘historical fiction’ etc. This is due to the way it was placed, which users might miss. The buttons are also clickable which does not look like it could at a glance. Thus, we feel this could be something that can be improved for better user experience. 

From this, we go on a step further and identify insights which could help us generate HMWs:

Task 2: Finding similar titles based on previous reads

For existing users:

(1) Open Libby App (2) Find similar book recommendations based on previous reads

We find that Libby’s book recommendations are very generic as it will bring us back to the genre section based on our previous read. Libby currently does not go the extra mile to suggest similar titles. It is not really a big problem but it is a ‘nice-to-have’ which could allow better user experience.

Based on the presentation's feedback, we were advised to look up on data to support the evidence that people really want to find titles that are similar to what they've read previously. Even though there are current sites utilising the personalised recommendations feature, it is always good to be backed by research so that our justification for implementing the solution is solid.

Thus, with this in mind, I went back to the root of why I asked this question in the first place. Is it a matter of better user experience? Why do we need preferences anyway? In the recent years, studies have shown that there is an emphasised need to move beyond usability and to understand and design for more engaging experiences (Hassenzahl & Tractinsky, 2006; Jacques, Preece, & Carey, 1995; Laurel, 1993). Having just the usability of a product that does not attract users’ attention and fails to engage users might prompt users to stop using the product. O’Brien (2008) posits that current successful technologies are “...not just usable; they engage users.” Thus, I think to engage users and motivate them to continue using the app, there has to be a level of personalisation to retain users. There are a number of ways to emulate engagement with several studies suggesting: media presentation, perceived user control, choice, challenge, feedback and variety (Jacques et al., 1995; Said, 2004; Webster & Ho, 1997). These engagement emulations affect the physical, cognitive and affective elements of user experience (O’Brien, 2008). With this, the use of personalised recommendations can be said to demonstrate the user’s ‘perceived user control’; the personalisation the product allows users to choose books based on previous reads, and perhaps ‘feedback’ as the product takes into account the users’ reads and then generate suggestions based on past history.

With the above in mind, I think having suggestions of similar titles could elevate the experience of existing users and improve user retention. However, this could be purely subjective and there are other ways to increase user engagement as stated. Using personalised recommendations may be one solution and are also commonly sighted in multiple products such as our NLB website and Amazon website. 

Moving on to the insights from this particular task:

Task 3: Confusing popularity rankings

For existing/new users:

(1) Open Libby App (2) Find a currently popular book on Libby

This was a very simple task yet we found that there were users who did not understand the labelling (the stars rating & no. in series) placed on the books. I think existing users who have used the app for a while may have an inkling, however, the explanation they gave was very vague and there were differences in responses. This could mean that the labelling is unclear and users are unsure of what it actually means. Several other labels within preferences are also very ambiguous and are most likely unused. Also, we could improve the screen’s real estate as currently, the title takes up about 1/3 that only one book is shown to the user (1st screen on the left). 

The insights we have come up with this particular task are:

‘How Might We’s

After compiling the insights from the three tasks, we came up with a few HMWs to try and tackle the problems listed for each one. The HMWs should not be direct as we did not want to zoom into the solutions straight away but it should give us room to think about other possible ways to solve them. 

Possible Solution Sketches

With our HMWs, we can use them as guidelines when sketching for possible solutions. The sketches should try to answer our HMWs, yet we should also bear in mind that this should not be our final version as we still need to test it out and gather user feedback if our lofi prototype is intuitive and solves the pain point of the problems above. 

Here we try to simplify the homepage and also arrange the headers such as ‘genres’, ‘audiobooks’, ‘movie books’, ‘recommends’ etc at the top to reduce scrolling and for better visibility for both new and existing users. 

Here we try to improve the user experience by adding ‘similar titles’ when the user taps into their previous reads. We have also talked about how the books are being arranged and changed the layout to a left alignment once a user taps into a title so that we keep the consistency of the app’s alignment. 

Lastly, we tackled to improve the preference filter inside a particular genre section. We found that the preferences Libby has already incorporated seem a lot like a tag function, however, the discoverability for a user to click into the tags and nest them together is very low. Thus, we decided to reduce the header’s size and placed a clear tag section where users can ‘add’ and ‘delete’ tags within a particular genre. The books sorting are also reduced in size so that users are able to see more than 2 books. The fourth book would be halved so that the user would know that it is scrollable.

What I have learnt

Leading up to the presentation, I find that my group had so many genuine critique and feedback regarding which app would be a good case study to do. It was a very fruitful discussion, with everyone pitching in the things we like/not like of our chosen app. In the end, we casted a vote which led to Libby being the winner. The other apps in contestation were Ezbuy, My Wardrobe app and the Paylah! app. All these applications were pitched by my other team members, and we made sure to highlight a main user journey and what could be interesting or beneficial to potentially make the experience a little better.

Source: DBS

Paylah! - The justification for picking this app was because nearly everyone on campus uses it. It’s almost like a necessity as most F&B vendors allow the use of the app to pay for food. The app is actually visually pleasing, however, the frustration comes when someone tries to whip out their phone and pay at a stall when there's a queue behind them. There is a waiting time where the user has to sign into the app before scanning the QR code for security reasons. The team member was wondering how we might make the experience a little faster but as it was quite limited in terms of how we wanted to fix the problem, we decided to eliminate it.

Source: Ezbuy

Ezbuy - The justification was that the homepage was really cluttered and it could be better if the visual hierarchy is improved. However, as it was pointed out in lecture and in class, redesigning an e-commerce app is painful and difficult, especially when their main goal is to sell and promote as many things to the user. It's doable but very hard. Since it was just a visual hierarchy problem on the main homepage, we eliminated it.

Source: Appadvice

My Wardrobe App - This was a close tie between Libby. This is an app where it plans wardrobe styles for you and also allows you to save those styles into personalised collections. Right of the bat when you open the app, you're asked to subscribe for a plan. And if you're not reading it closely enough, there is a line that reads, "click here to close," underlined when there should be an 'x' or an obvious button to close it. The team member also found that there was no warning before you trash a collection, so it instantly disappears when you tap the 'trash' icon. This could be dangerous if someone taps it by accident. However, we deliberated and found that not a lot of people use this app compared to Libby, and decided to remove it.

Thus, Libby was chosen and we went over the main reasons why it is a good app but it can be better. However, when it comes to actually doing the slides together and adding our own individual justifications, it was hard to get everyone to do it. One didn’t even download the app because some of us already did and another was mia when we were discussing and doing the slides. I’m not sure why, perhaps we’re all so busy with other assignments and this seems minute in detail. But I hope our team dynamics would change as we slowly get to know and collaborate with each other.

Despite our shortcomings when it comes to physical group work, everyone had good insights to share. I think moving forward, we should all be more transparent with our roles and delegate tasks clearly. That may also encourage everyone to pitch in and help out.

What I have learnt

Our group will individually curate a few apps which we think could be improved to elevate the user experience and then reconvene to discuss them. Thus, I decided to rank the apps I often use in my phone and decide if there are any gaps and how we can address those issues.

Top 3 Apps Used

Source: iMore

Safari: One of the apps I often use is Safari. Safari is not a downloadable app, as it is already existing in the iPhone. I find myself having the habit of opening a lot of tabs to keep and retain information just so I could go back to them later. I realised I’ve never used the ‘bookmark’ function. The reason might be because seeing what tabs I have currently opened is feedback enough that I’ll go back in the future and read them. Perhaps, we could design around better visibility for bookmarking of sites?

Source: LibbyApp

Libby: I’m a recent user of Libby and I’m loving it so far. Libby is literally a pocket library on your phone. Libby is a digital library where one can borrow books using your own NLB library card. It curates over billions of books and users from all over the world could scour, find one that suits them and read them offline. It even has audiobooks! Libby has a lot of plus points, but what could make the experience even better? I noticed that finding books when you already know what you need is easy, but trying to find the right book to read is hard when you are overwhelmed with choices. Also, for a first time user, it may be difficult to navigate if you do not have a particular book to search for and is just browsing through. Perhaps, we could design a way to declutter the navigation and be more personalised?

Source: 9to5Mac

Podcast: This app is another one of iPhone’s exclusive apps already preexisting on the phone. The application has a curation of podcasts from different shows and one can tune to each episode individually or download them for offline listening. The design of the podcast app is very intuitive, however, sometimes if I find a podcast really insightful, I would usually have the problem of finding previous podcasts that I have listened to before. Also, during episodes, there would also be interesting pieces of dialogue which I would love if I could visually be able to pull from the podcast. Something like highlights from a particular read. I wonder if we could somehow incorporate how we highlight texts into an audio context. 

What I have learnt