Background

Based on the findings from testing two competing designs for an updated app and article navigation (See T196398), recommendations and amendments will be made to a converged new design. The purpose of this study will be to identify any further usability improvements that can be made to this design.

Goals of the study

Assess the usability of the new app and article navigation design, particularly:
(i) Article reading experience
(ii) Access and browsing other parts of the app
(iii) Searching and finding articles
(iv) Customization (access to changing the feed, etc)

Testing script

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UZLI46c5-ydFwyIv6egxzpramn4OaOoQ2_479vyDeVE/edit?usp=sharing

Test format

Remote UserTesting,com session with existing and new Android users.

Participants

Ideally there will be at least 5 participants for the study.

Findings

New users

General feedback

• All five users were able to complete all of the tasks in the test in a timely manner
• All five users were able to return to the Explore feed from the Article view on their first try
• Users generally reacted positively towards the TOC
• Users generally reacted positively towards the floating article bar and were able to navigate back to their tab stack
• The user on tablet mentioned that the on boarding screens felt a bit small and sticky to the bottom

Article view navigation

• Some users (3 of 5) had trouble initially finding the 'Add to reading list' icon on the article view
• The majority of users relied primarily on the overflow menu on the article view to navigate and defaulted there for the first place that they looked for article options

TOC

• 1 user had trouble activating the TOC from swipe
• 1 user wanted to be able to swipe the TOC away to dismiss it
• 2 users had a bit of trouble understanding how dragging the TOC indicator worked and felt that it was not precise enough
• The help message for the TOC was cut off for most users and the indicator was not visible in the highlighted message circle

Existing users

Coming soon

Recommendations

• T208053 Increase the text size and center illustrations on the on boarding screens on larger devices (tablets)
• T208054 Ensure that the TOC message is not cut off on smaller devices and that the TOC slider is visible when the message is shown
• T208056 Consider ways to make the article toolbar more visible (3 of 5 new users trouble noticing the tab bar during testing and therefore relied more heavily on the article overflow menu)
• T208057 Consider removing the image from the Empty state for reading lists, currently with the floating article bar and the CTA to sync reading lists it is hard to read the empty state text
• T208060 Consider adding a 'swipe to close' gesture for the TOC