My partner and I conducted 2 usability studies on the Carezone iOS application. We created a usability test plan and completed a usability assessment study with 6 participants on the effectiveness of Carezone’s core features. We delivered a usability report with our results, findings, and actionable recommendations. I created a revised prototype that implemented some of our key recommendations. In order to test the effectiveness of our revised design, we conducted a comparison usability study against the original Carezone design.
Usability Assessment Study
6 current iOS users, who were also managing multiple prescription medications, completed our usability study of Carezone iOS application. While our study produced a number of results and findings, we identified 3 aspects of the Carezone mobile app design that prevented users from completing common tasks easily and effectively:
1. The category taxonomy is too large and is confusing.
2. Some platform conventions are unfamiliar and not consistently implemented throughout the application.
3. App specific labeling conflicts with user expectation on mobile.
Comparison Study
I created a revised prototype for 3 interactions that represented typical user pain points experienced during our assessment study. My goal in redesigning these screens was to increase the emphasis of call to actions while staying within the original Carezone aesthetic.
Main Menu
Add a Reminder
Add a New Person - Save
Challenges
A tight deadline meant we would have a very short recruitment and test window. A between subjects test design also meant we would need to make sure to recruit enough participants to effectively measure each prototype. Using the Marvel App, I created testable prototypes for both the original and the redesign. A remote unmoderated test design allowed us to deploy our study rapidly. We recruited 16 people (8 per prototype) to complete our comparison study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two test environments, and completed the test on their mobile iOS device. Completed tests were uploaded by the lookback platform and retrieved for analysis. I measured completion times using adobe premiere pro.
Test Version A - Original Carezone Design
Test Version B - Carezone Redesign
Results
Participants who received the redesigned interface performed their task faster than participants who received the original Carezone interface. On average, participants who received the redesign (mean = 18.97, std. = 6.96) were able to complete their test task twice as fast as participants who received the original design (mean = 38.97, std. = 17.34). A two sample t-test indicates that the results of our study were statistically significant. t(14) =2.90,p=.012.
Wrap Up
Our results suggest that users will locate calls to action easier on the Carezone interface when greater emphasis is placed on differentiating text and CTA’s. Our test also confirms that users can identify CTA's faster when they conform to mobile conventions. We recommend replacing the text call to actions with the more familiar forms of mobile navigation that were used in our redesign. This change would reduce user frustration and the increase the overall effectiveness of the Carezone platform on iOS.
