Citizen Science Step 9: User Testing & Accessibility

Hi Friends! I have finished my user testing over the Citizen Science App, Reduce, Reuse, Reminder, and I am excited to share my results with you all!

The goal of these user testings was to understand how accessible my design was for all different types of people. I had to interview/test 4 users. Each user had to represent a different category: a fully functional user, a user who had vision troubles, a user who was motor impaired, and someone from an older generation. All of these different types of users will give insight on whether the information is easy to see, tap on, and understand for the user.

Let’s dive in!

User Tester #1

My first user tester was a fellow Maryville student named Kaitlyn Perrier. She represented the fully functional user. Someone with no vision or motor difficulties.

Kaitlyn enjoyed the app a lot! She thought the visuals were entertaining and self motivating. She did not have any trouble getting through the app. She believed everything was clearly labeled.

The only time she would have difficulties was when XD wasn’t functioning properly. I asked Kaitlyn if she felt the buttons needed to be bigger and she didn’t think it was a design problem but rather an XD malfunction. Although she did not think the buttons needed to be bigger, I decided to create invisible boxes behind some of the tappable buttons without outlines. This way, while using the prototype, the user could tap on things more easily.

I asked Kaitlyn if she was use this app if it were real. She believes that she would. She stated that it felt like a game which was fun and makes you want to use it.

User Tester #2

My second user tester was my friend Nan Chen. Nan wears glasses because without them, things get super blurry. He can kind of read things that are close to him. I asked Nan if he could take off his glasses for this interview. He agreed. As he was going through the app, It was hard for him to see the small text. During the interview, he stated “I can only see the colors and shapes”.

I took this information and decided to make some of my text in a larger font size. I specifically changed the size of my tabs in the market section of the app. They were a font-size of 10 points.

By making them a 12 point size, it was a lot easier to read. I decided to further this decision and make any text that was typed in a 10 point font into a 12 points. I believe this will help my target audience be able to read all aspects of my app’s information.

Other than that one critique, Nan enjoyed using the app and liked the concept. He claimed that is was cute to look at.

User Tester #3

My third user was another friend of mine named Irina Fawcett. I asked Irina to use her non dominent hand while using the app to see how easy the app is to use when the user’s motor abilities are not as strong.

Irina had no difficulties using her left hand as she navigated through the app. There was no section on it that required a skillful movement. This is because I modeled my app off of social media’s app navigation. I wanted to make sure everything could be accomplished with a simple tap on the screen.

Irina gave me beneficial feedback over the design itself. I originally did not have the Market as a section on my app’s navigation. This was a user can only grow one plant at a time. It isn’t until your plant is fully grown that you are able to pick out a new seed to grow. Irina believed it was an important feature to have because it would motivate users to grow their plant. If they saw a cool looking plant at the Market, they would be motivated to do more good deeds to get done with growing their plant and then pick out the new one they want. I believed that was an excellent point so I added a Market icon to the navigation tabs.

User Tester #4

My final user tester was one of my former teachers here at Maryville. Laurie Eisenbach represents an older generation: someone who is 55 years old or older. This age group actually represents the target audience that I had to design for. Laurie stated that she normally does not play with game apps on her phone. This allowed me to see how someone with not as much background in this field would behave as they navigated through the site.

Laurie understood most of the app. There is a screen that appears when you tap on your good deed to plug in points. All it is a short description of what the good deed is and why it is important. The user is supposed to tap the check mark to continue and earn their points. Lorie did not think that check mark button was tappable. She believed that it was just an indicator that you have earned the points. I asked her why she felt it wasn’t clickable and she could not exactly put it into words. That was the main thing I learned from her interview. I decided to look at the differences between my circular buttons compared to my rectangular button. What I noticed was my circle buttons do not have stroked around them where as my rectangle ones do. In the end, I decided to add a stroke around my circle ones.

Laurie loved the concept of my app along with my visuals. She said it was very pleasant to look at. It was something she would consider to download on her phone.

User Testing #5: Colorblind Testing

The final testing I had to do was see how well my app functioned through the eyes of someone who is colorblind. I accomplished this through a website that allows you to download images and changes the colors to see what the screen looks like through the eyes of someone who is green-blind. This was really interesting to see.

The goal of this experiment was to see how well the visual information stood when the colors are not cooperating like they should.

There is this one section in my app that shows what a plant looks like when it is not being taken care of with good deeds. I represented this by using the color orange for the plant. However, through the color blindness simulator, a healthy plant and a dying plant looked almost the same in color. I changed the design of my dying plant to show a leaf that fell off the plant. This will be a better indicator that the plant is wilting without relying on color.