Think-aloud summary

To test our application with users who haven't used the application before, we created a couple of test scenarios so that they could try it out and we could observe and see how easily navigated the app was. We told the users to do a think-aloud, meaning that they say everything they think when they take action and make a decision while navigating within the app.

The first screen the user is met by in the app is a screen with a bunch of flags, which represent the language in which the app and all the information will be in. Directly after choosing a language (by clicking on a flag) [intuitive to click flags, no text], the user is taken to the Exhibitions screen. This was a little confusing to a couple of users, so we're thinking of adding a sort of Welcome screen after the language selection, so that the users are introduced to the application properly.

The first task was "Using the application, how would you do to find your way to the museum?" So after choosing their language, all of our users pressed the three lines in the upper left corner, signaling that there is a menu to be reached. Here, we had a couple of different results where some users pressed "Museum Map", or "Info" instead of "Get Here", probably because the word "map" was in the title - something they were looking for. We might have to rethink our titles to better match the initial thought of the user.

The second task was to find information about the dinosaur with the longest neck. Our users' reactions here were pretty much the same. They clicked the menu button, and then "Exhibitions", chose the dinosaur exhibition and found the one with the tallest neck by looking at the pictures of the different exhibits. We also had a user that said that he would either do it this way, or by going to the museum map (which he accidently went to during the first scenario) and selecting the dinosaur exhibition. One user went to the menu and pressed "Info" at first, only to see that the link didn't go anywhere at the moment, but then went for "Exhibitions".

The third task was to change the language of the application. This is where most people had difficulties, as they would go directly for "Settings" in the menu, instead of the direct link "Language". This is probably because most people are used to finding those kind of options within the settings, and not directly via the menu. We talked this over and we're thinking of maybe keeping the intuition from the very first language selection screen, and making a flag in the menu instead of the title "Language". Not only is it visually compelling and intuitive - it also helps users that accidently chose the wrong language at first to find their way back to the language selection menu by only having to interpret icons on their way.

The fourth and final task that we let the users do was to try and find their way (imagining that they were inside the museum) to a specific exhibition. At this point, most of our users found their way to the menu and then "Museum Map" at once, seeing as they had been in the menu a couple of times already so they had learned what they could do from there. Some tried to find their way by going to “Exhibitions”, but later realized that it didn’t work and that “Museum Map” was the way to go.

All in all, the think-aloud sessions was a great way to test our application out and see how other people react when they use it. We have come to the conclusion that we have a couple of things that we can improve and implement in our design, hopefully making it easier to use.

Some of the users expressed a need for a return button to make the navigation easier. This is something our critics also mentioned at the last exercise and of course we have taken it into consideration. We haven’t made any final decisions about it yet, though, because we are still discussing whether we should have an actual button for it or if it should be a motion, for example swiping the screen from left to right.

What can we take from these user tests, looking at the different “laws” that we learned last week? Well, first of all, every single user directly understood that the 3 lines was the menu, which is because it is (in today’s society) intuitive that a menu will look like that, and that makes it a so called standard.

We also incorporated Hick’s law, since they had a limited amount of options on whatever screen they currently are on, it felt like the users found it easy to point to the menu (since it is one of very few options), and then navigate from there - once again because there are a limited amount of options. The menu currently has six options, which Hick’s law says is good (that it is easier to navigate two menues of five, rather than one menu of ten). It also follows “The Magical Number Seven” that it is easier for the human mind to remember options of seven (plus minus two) - and guess what? Six is right in that range!

One thing we can look further into, based on the user tests, is Tesler’s Law of the Conservation of Complexity, which basically says that everything should be dumbed down as much as humanly possible to avoid confusion. There was some confusion when it came to things such as getting to the museum and getting to a specific exhibit. So we need to look into how we can make those options even simpler.