Clicky

Usability testing of Financial Game

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Type of project

Client project for a startup

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Role & Team

Executing all the parts of usability testing on my own, communicating with the client

Time

February - May 2019 (around 1 day/week)

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Deliverables

Usability test report, designer’s journey

Context & Problem

In a second-year course “Experience Lab“ in a UXD program at The Hague University of Applied Sciences I was supposed to find a client for my own project. I agreed with a Czech startup called VSFG to help them usability test their online life simulation game focused on finances. The game was in beta and had many usability issues that I was supposed to uncover, so they can make the next version better. As the game is in Czech, the whole testing and analysis were conducted in Czech language.

Preparation & Recruitment
  • Defining test objectives
  • Defining target group
  • Recruiting
  • Writing script
  • Pilot test
Usability test
  • Individual interviews
Analysis
  • Transcribing important quotes
  • Tagging and clustering data
  • Client involvment
Results presentation
  • Discussing findings with client
  • Giving suggestions

Full process

Preparation & Recruitment

When preparing the script it was hard to specify what to focus on in the usability test as I was tempted to test everything. I choose to focus on one specific element, a loan setting page because I had a hypothesis that the users do not understand how to use it in a way it was intended to. In addition, to have an unbiased understanding of the subjects, I let them orientate themselves in the game at first and only after that I chose to lead them to the loan element.

A screenshot of page where the user can set up a loan.

The first page of the interview script.

When asked, the client specified the target group as young people between 18 and 25. This age group has a higher chance to be still influenced and change their financial habits for the better. Therefore, people from this age group were recruited for the testing.

Usability test

I used webcam, microphone and screen recording during the test to be able to fully focus on the participant and my script.

A screenshot from the video recording. All the recrdings included a screen capture, webcam capturing the participants emotions and facial expressions. The recordings also had audio capture of the interview.

Analysis

I went through all the recordings and wrote down all the excerpts I thought are important on individual post-its. I cited participants on white post-its and I wrote finidings on yellow post-its

I made sure that each post-it had a tag marking the participant and I further tagged the posits with the severity of the problem.

Finally, I clustered the post-its according to different areas of the game and then according to similar problems in that area.

From this overview, I could quite easily draw conclusions.

Results presentation

To present the results I made a PowerPoint presentation for the client and showed them my findings during a call. We discussed the results and my suggestions on what to do with the findings. Later I send them a detailed report which they could have a look into any time later.

I put as many citations from the testing into the presentation as possible, to bring the perspective of the users alive.

Deliverables

Design report

Later I send them a detailed report with all the usability problems sorted out by the importance (critical, major, minor) and gave suggestions on what to do with it. I used as many graphics and citations as possible to make it easy to read and process the information.

Designer's journey

To reflect on this project, I created my own “customer journey” of my process. I transformed my design diary into this condensed overview of the project to evaluate my confidence, my strengths and areas for growth. You can read more about designer's journey in my dedicated article.

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