Benefits of user testing
How user testing provided valuable insights into the impact of external, micro-interactions
At RightIndem, UCD (User Centred Design) is core to all design process and we firmly believe in placing customers at the heart of all our design decisions. We adopt Lean UX, a process which enables us to make assumptions on user goals, hypothesis on how we plan to solve these goals and evidencing our results to measure success and assumption accuracy.
RightIndem Design Process
Our design process starts by identifying users and creating user personas. The exciting challenge for our design team is that we have two user groups; our eFNOL customer and the insurer claims handler. By creating user personas, user assumptions and user journeys, we understand the emotional needs and process requirements of each user group.
Making use of office whiteboards, pen & paper and any other material we rapidly generate low-fi mock-ups to begin the challenge of solving our user goal. Our early ideas are tested amongst the wider team and once achieving a high-confidence level we transition these mock-ups into high-fidelity prototypes.
User Testing
We strive to test our ideas both internally and externally. Testing provides many insights into our product. We know from previous user testing sessions that, for our product in particular, visual aesthetic is not essential to our users. Our users want to get the job done. They want a seamless, frictionless journey that alleviates stress and anxiety. We also know that jargon increases frustration which is heightened for mandatory task orientated goals. Finally, another shared insight is the common user mental model, regardless of demographic. There are new trends emerging that demonstrate evolving mental models, mainly due to the influx of new smartphone apps as gesture-based interactions become more popular, however the essential mental models that relate back to basic UI principles still hold true.
A recent finding from user testing has played a key role in our approach to design and has increased our awareness and respect for external micro-interaction.
The Goal
Our user goal was fairly simple; request the user to obtain some vehicle photos. We know from our research the impact of jargon and content overload, so our initial design presented a concise instruction accompanied with a supporting diagram. Initial internal testing suggested that these instructions were clear, did not overwhelm or create confusion.
The Result
The result was that the photographs obtained did not align to our product instruction.
The Why
Wanting to explore further, we ran some user tests on this stage of our product. We found that several external micro-interactions occurred between the time the instructions were consumed and the task of obtaining the photo.
The process can be broken down as such:
- User consumes our app instruction on how to capture their photo.
- Micro interaction: User grants permission to allow our app to access their camera.
- Micro interaction: User decides between two options; Capturing a photo or selecting existing photo from device.
- Micro interaction: User physically approaches their vehicle.
- Micro interaction: User is presented with their native camera, no longer displaying our original instruction or our UI.
- Impact: User has forgotten our original instruction.
These micro-interactions seem small and fairly unobtrusive. However, they play a huge impact on our user’s short-term memory. As these micro-interactions are both cognitive and physical, they break down short-term memory causing our users to forget the initial instruction. This causes incorrect photo capture which in turn plays greater significance to our second user group; insurer claim handlers. We would have never discovered this small but significant behaviour without the use of user testing.
The Future
The future for RightIndem and our eFNOL application is very exciting and this photo capture feature is a significant reason behind our excitement. From our findings, we are now able to approach our initial user goal in an entirely new way, one that will not only offer a frictionless, intuitive experience providing accurate information for both user groups but one that will be unique to our product and market.
For more information on RightIndem, visit our official Medium blog.
