Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

P3.3.a User Feedback Plan

Studyaholic’s design focused on the objectives of simplicity and compatibility. The objective of

our design is to reduce the complex and awkward act of finding study partners to a minimalist level of

playful swiping. The simplicity of creating a profile with your classes and schedule and swiping to match

with others who may be compatible. Only allowing contact between matches creates only conversations

between people with mutual interests, avoiding the users wasting time conversing with people who are

incompatible or have different interests.

There are multiple Nielsen Heuristics that play a part in the design and implementation of

Studyaholic. We want our system to follow “Match between system and the real world” because

Studyaholic should seem familiar to the user and second nature to use. We do not want the user to ever be

confused by the wording of the app so there will be strict “Consistency and standards” so that no different

words or actions mean the same thing. Finally, we design Studyaholic with an “Aesthetic and minimalist

design” because unnecessary dialogue or actions diminishes the main objectives of the app.

To seek design feedback from members of our target user group, we will interview users for

approximately 10-20 minutes. We are choosing to do an interview rather than a survey because of the

extra data that interviews provide. By interviewing our target user group, we are able to collect non-verbal

data, context, and reasoning behind interviewees answers. To obtain subjective feedback, we will ask

some open-ended questions and dissect the user’s answers after the interview. We can bring up new issues

that may be relevant to the study that arise during the course of discussion with the interviewee.

Interviews allow us to receive more precise data since researchers can ask for clarification on vague or

ill-defined answers.

To conduct interviews, we will meet the user on campus in a familiar setting with low

background noise (like the College of Computing or Student Center). A familiar setting is chosen so the

interviewee feels comfortable in the environment. We want the user to feel as comfortable as possible to
Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

simulate a situation in which they would use the app normally- like looking at it casually while sitting at a

popular campus location. All of the team members will be present at the interviews, and we will rotate

who walks the user through the app, conducts the interview, facilitates extra conversations, and records

the entirety of the interview.

For the actual interview process, we will first explain the purpose of the app. Next, we will give a

brief run through on how to use our prototype by showing them the main screens and action buttons. After

the user has some understanding on how to use the app, we will allow the user to interact with it. We will

give the user a task to do, such as create a profile or message a match in order to get feedback on specific

aspects of our app. The interviewee will be prompted to think aloud while completing the task. When the

task is complete, the interviewer will wrap up the interview by asking the user questions. We will use

regular questions as well as the System Usability Scale to get user feedback. After all the interviews are

complete, all team members will look back at the recordings of the interviews together and analyze the

responses given.

Sample Interview Questions:

- *confirm that interviewee is in target user group*

- Do you see yourself using this tool in place of trying to find study partners naturally?

Why or why not?

- At which points did you feel confused with the app?

Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

- What part of the app seemed unnecessarily complicated?

- What elements of the app felt irrelevant?

- Are the icons for messaging and matching easy to notice?

- Are they easy to understand?

- Do they do what you would expect?

- Did you have trouble finding a specific feature?

- Would you recommend our product to a friend?

- What feature(s) of our product is most important to you?

- What feature(s) of our product is least important to you?

- Do you feel the profile screen has too much/too little information on it?

- Is there any information that can be omitted or that should be added?

- Is there anything that you would change to the design to make it more natural for the

user?

- Given the app’s goal of helping you find study partners, why wouldn’t you use this app

again?

- Would the app help solve your problem/achieve your goal? Why or why not?

- What triggers would prompt you to use this app?

System Usability Scale Questions:

Ask the user how much they agree with each statement on a scale of 1-10

- I think that I would like to use this system frequently.

- I found the system unnecessarily complex.

- I thought the system was easy to use.

Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

- I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this system.

- I found the various functions in this system were well integrated.

- I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.

- I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly.

- I found the system very cumbersome to use.

- I felt very confident using the system.

- I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.