Usability Studies & Iteration

Once the design was complete, I conducted five user studies with clients to gather insights for iteration.

For the login experience, there were minor changes made primarily to the error messages and other body text but the biggest win was validating the importance of a password reset link. Several users would simply login through a web browser most of the time or reset it there. Adding that streamlined approach in the app was deemed extremely useful.

For the account/project selection experience, the open search bar was validated and users took advantage of it quite a bit. A lot of feedback was gathered for future enhancements such as sorting, etc. One additional change was made and that was to swap the page header that originally read “Home” to the actual account title and this was to further confirm the user’s account selection on the prior page.

I added labels as well to the original stand-alone icons such as filter and log out and replaced a chevron with a more appropriate close (X) icon now that the project selection was shown as a modal. I also added labels to the main navigation menu which previously were stand-alone icons.

For the add menu/navigation bar, the changes made were mainly stylistic. The few iterations made were label changes and adding industry terms that needed to be more universal.

The main navigation and logging out process were items I was interested in gathering more information on. The last tab was originally titled “More” and the log-out button would live on that page alongside the details (location, important contacts, etc.) The details were on its own sub-page as well and the “More” was really very purposeless.

For the documents page, the changes were also stylistic, but I did take it upon myself to introduce toasts as a new component to the mobile design system. Toasts weren’t even remotely under consideration and I had to establish a case against generic iOS notifications being the only form of messaging in the app. This wasn’t difficult by any means, as once the scenarios were drawn up and accessibility came into the conversation, it was a no-brainer to customize these elements, and since messages were already designed in the style guide, referencing a library wasn’t too much of an effort. We established success, error, warning and information toasts.

For the workflows page, there were several enhancements to the module from a design system implementation aspect and only a handful of flow changes.

Though there were several enhancements to the module from a design system implementation aspect, there were only a handful of flow changes. To my surprise, there was very little iteration after testing. The fact of the matter is that the current app itself wasn’t favored to accomplish work and very commonly the users would be surprised that certain features existed that weren’t new at all. This was great to hear in the sense that any changes made were low risk and could guarantee an increase in adoption.