Problem
The code of the TV app of my client’s video-streaming platform needed to be rewritten (the old code caused issues). It was an opportunity to do a research study to find out areas for usability improvements.
Method
Moderated 1h-long interviews with 5 users.
Scenario included 4 tasks per user. Users were invited to explain what they are doing in the process.
TEAM: Moderator: myself + 1 note taker: colleague
Questions I asked
- What are the main pain points in the TV app?
- Do users find what they need / look for easily?
- What users experience that is missing in the TV app?
- What are some of the favorite features in other TV apps that users use?
Impact
The design of the new app included a number features desired by users and removed the biggest pain points.
Introduced in the new app:
- improved search (with suggestions, considering typos, similar titles suggestions)
- resolving language issues: language indicators on content, profile language vs. content language
- removing “auto-play” option from player and moving it to app settings (it caused confusion)
The study in detail:
Lessons learned & what can be improved
Overall the usability testing process worked well and the results rendered were satisfactory, there are a couple of lessons:
- recruitment of users from German-Swiss part of the country turned out to be much easier than from French-Swiss. Find ideas for a private pool or another provider
- regrouping with the note taker directly after each test allows to roughly summarize the main points and answer the main questions of the test. Delaying that step makes it easier to forget what the user said / did.
