Odd-Jobs is a web-based application that provides college students with a readily available way to make money by completing user-posted jobs. Phase 2 of this project was dedicated to finishing previous tasks from Phase 1 and implementing new features. Chief among these tasks was a log-in page that differentiated students and job posters, hiring the same student from previous jobs, verification badges for students and map functionality.
Our team used two primary research methods for this sprint. Our focus was to test how users felt about our first Interface draft. One of the methods we used was a Cognitive Walkthrough. The purpose of a Cognitive Walkthrough is to have an external user complete a workflow we would expect our users to encounter. This is accomplished by using wireframes to emulate our UI design. We had a sample size of two Usability Engineering students who completed this. The User and Scenario they used were a college student who was looking for a dog walker for his dog that is in his price range.
We used informal feedback for our second research method. After a demonstration of our product, Software Engineers received feedback from a sample size of 65 college students. They collected data based on these questions: What other features would you like to see? How should we separate users from job-doers and job posters?
Our findings through the first Cognitive Walkthrough indicated that while our tester was able to successfully login via a Google account, we needed more wireframes to display what a complete walkthrough would look like. That has since then been accomplished however, during that period, the tester pointed out a need for a nested scroll view in the “new jobs” box that would allow users to click on jobs and view them. They also suggested that users should be able to view either the accepted jobs or new jobs, but not both options at the same time. Their last suggestion was to implement a search function with filters for finding new jobs.
Wireframe 1: Job Poster Main Page with a newly added search bar with possible filter.
Our findings for the second Cognitive Walkthrough pointed out a need to have some sort of highlighting feature when mousing over different buttons, along with the need to add a help/support button on the main page. The tester also suggested that we add some sort of tutorial for first-time users and a way to rate/review the people who finish jobs. Other than that, their experience fell in line with the first tester, in that we needed more wireframes to accurately capture the process of completing the scenarios we had set up for them to follow.
Lastly, the Informal Feedback helped narrow down how we could separate those who post jobs and those who complete them. This also told us that we needed to separate them because having both sides able to see all functions would lead to sensitive user information being leaked, namely that of job poster home addresses which would have been included in the “recently posted jobs tab”.
We can conclude that our original 1.0 sketches and wireframes needed to be improved based on our methods. The Cognitive Walkthrough informed us that our designs were lacking detail. While users could “complete” a task, they noted it was not always clear how they were meant to proceed after the previous step, causing them to guess their next action.
Informal Feedback revealed that users would prefer a separated, streamlined interface for Posters and “Employees”. This told us that we would need to fix our process and communicate the changes with our Software Team. Based on these methods we are aware we need to reorganize our designs and make it more clear where the user would need to go to complete a task. This was done by expanding our Wireframes and adding more familiar details to make our interface more learnable to a new user and keep retention of existing users.
Some caveats that we have identified as of this second sprint are that the Cognitive Walkthroughs and Informal Feedback sessions were done by students learning UX and design. Even though they are learning about this topic and have more knowledge than the average person, this does not compare to a professional who is proficient in this field and knows what to look for. The Cognitive Walkthroughs were also done by a small sample size of 2 (x=2), which does not provide nearly enough information to work off of to make a better product. One of these walkthroughs was also done on a scenario that our wireframes were not developed for at the time. In regards to the Informal Feedback session, this was done at a time when the actual application was not working, so the amount of feedback provided was limited to the questions that we gave the design team.