CELLPHONE KIOSK APP USABILITY TESTING
Many customers dread a visit to their telecommunications provider’s store. It’s not that picking out a new phone or new plan is necessarily difficult, it’s the amount of time it takes. Between limited sales representatives being available, and those representatives wanting to spend a lot of time trying to upsell customers, many people find themselves spending a frustrating amount of time trying to get a new phone or update their phone’s plan. As a result, I was tasked with designing an application that would run in a cellphone kiosk, with the goal of allowing savvy shoppers to bypass the salespeople and go through most of the steps of picking out a phone and/or plan on their own. The app was designed for the fictional “Thrive Mobile” company.
Context
Lesley University Course Project
My role
UX researcher (part of a team) and UX designer
Stakeholder
Professor Chiranit Prateepasen
Target Users
- Previous experience with in-person cellphone store purchases
- Age: 30-60 years old
- Geography: US only
- Income: $45,000 per year or more
- Language: English
Timeline
The project took 7 weeks to complete, with some tasks overlapping.
- Review interviews: 1 week
- Create empathy map: 1 week
- Create job stories: 2 days
- Create storyboards: 1 week
- Create user flow: 1 week
- Create lo-fi wireframe prototype: 1 week
- Create hi-fi prototype: 1 week
- Run hi-fi prototype user test: 1 week
Process
We began by studying the audio recordings we were provided. I took notes of what was said in the recordings, highlighting key terms that were repeated by the different users and tracking the major pain points.
Pain Points
- Savvy shoppers don’t want to waste time talking with salespeople.
- Salespeople sometimes give inaccurate or misleading information regarding plans.
- Salespeople sometimes quote inaccurate prices.
User Flow
From that data, I built an empathy map to better understand the average user’s experience and their pain points. I used the persona behind that empathy map to create several job stories to see how users expected their cellphone store shopping experiences to ideally go. Then I created and presented a storyboard showing my kiosk app solution idea to my team. My teammates gave their feedback on my idea, and with the help of that feedback I developed a user flow of my proposed app idea.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
With that user flow as a guide, I created the low-fidelity wireframes for my app. I made a clickable prototype from these wireframes and again presented them to my team.
High-Fidelity Prototype
From that second round of feedback, I made further improvements to my kiosk app prototype before finally making a high-fidelity version, which I tested with target users. Those users recorded their screens as they used my prototype, talked through their actions, and answered several questions at the end of their experience.
From that user data, I now know that I have an app prototype that has good usability and solves user pain points. Some features users particularly liked were:
- The ability to compare plans side-by-side.
- The minimalist design and big form fields.
- The self-explanatory nature of the app.
I also got some great user feedback on how to improve the app further. Some of the feedback was:
- The phone selection slider can be confusing.
- A tooltip explaining the phone capacity options would be helpful.
- A breakdown of the cost increase on the monthly bill screen would be helpful.
Next Steps and Recommendations
Next, I would recommend the following based on the user feedback:
- Add arrows to the phone selection screen to supplement the sliders and make the screen more intuitive.
- Break down the phones’ capacity into real-world numbers, like “64 GB (holds 2,184 high-res photos)”. This could be done via a tappable tooltip.
- Reformat the Verify Charges page to make it clearer what charges are being added to the monthly bill, and what charges are only made at the time of purchase.
- Expand the prototype to test for other user flows, such as upgrading devices.
