Interaction Design Project | 01 Research
For my second blog series during the MSc in UXD my team will be researching, redesigning and testing a digital prototype of RTE Player. The popular Irish broadcasting service has many bad reviews towards their application. Our task was to discover why, identify opportunities, then redesign and test it to improve the user experience.
It was abundantly clear there were issues with RTE’s online player from their online reviews. Between the anger and frustration we were able to identify some opportunities for UX improvement. These people waned to search and watch their favourite programmes easily, they wanted to watch programmes to relax and switch off, they wanted recommendations tailored for them.
Using Jakob Neilson’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design we analysed the current app as is which helped us discover issues with error prevention, efficiency of use. Proving the online reviews.
Card sorting our results from our individual surveys and interviews confirmed the issues people had online. It also gave us additional raw insights into behaviours, such as when or why they used such apps. What their expectations were. That they are motivated by convenience, ease of use, friends suggestions and in app recommendations.
Using this mixed method approach of quantitative and qualitative user research allowed us not to limit our results. Past research throughout this course showed me that human behaviour has complex patterns, motivations and behaviours cannot be measured by ticking a box.
A diary study would be the next valuable piece of user research method to really get in the users behavioural patterns when switching off and watching video's in the evening.
Identifying the UX problems and opportunities such as the overall navigation of the player, the content placement, how the ads are integrated we set out with a goal to improve infrequent use and that high drop off rate through an improved designed user experience.
Largely based on the data from my interviews, mixing in survey data and RTEs audience. I characterised two personas. Grace the young professional who switches off in the evenings with a good box set. And Jimmy, the DIY enthusiast who is motivated by education but needs family friendly content on the weekends.
Creating empathy maps allowed me to discover Grace and Jimmy‘s feelings, thoughts and actions which helped envisage to be scenarios they might have when using these apps.
We came together as a team, identifying trends in our personas, identified our 3 user types, young professional, parents and non natives and I characterised our main persona Derick.
Derick’s ‘as is’ scenario brainstorming showed us the pain points the reviewers online had spoke about. We were able to use data from our surveys and interviews here, with research from competitors to identify opportunities.
Turning these pain points and frustrations into opportunities we created a ‘to-be’ scenario for Derick. This helped us brainstorm use cases for new features we could implement to improve the current RTE player.
We summarised these features into a to be user cycle. Our redesign will focus on socialising — introducing a chat during live watching. Rating — integrating tools such as IMBD and Rotten Tomatoes. Sharing — to suggest and recommend shows to users to invite others without having to leave the app. Help me pick — to give the user interesting content tailored fr them in an efficient, ‘don’t make them think’ way. As well as improving the overall navigation, searching and browsing experience.
References
Nielsen, J. (1995). 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/Personas. (n.d.) Retrieved October 31, 2020, from http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html
Appendix
Interview transcripts, recordings and consent forms Sharepoint link
Google Play reviews
Product Brainstorm
Stakeholder mapping
Project goals
Survey Results
Online Reviews (Not my work)
Direct competitor analysis (Not my work)
Indirect competitor analysis (Not my work)
