Usability Findings for Screenlife App
The complete list
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Onboarding & authorization
Finding 1: Participants didn’t understand what was going on during the onboarding. They tried to skip it because they were irritated by the fast video playback. 5 of 7 participants wanted to stop the videos by tapping on the screen.
Participants with a lower level of technical literacy were overwhelmed entirely, some of them tried to interact with the website controls shown in the videos.
Solution 1: We need to rethink how we onboard our users and try to explain better how users can benefit from using the Screenlife.
“Why everything is moving so fast? What is going on here? Is he trying to sell me something?”
— Usability test participant about our onboarding experience.
Finding 2: All users chose “Don’t allow” option in the notification permission dialog.
Solution 2: The native permission dialog can be shown only once, so I think that before showing it we should display our custom dialog that would ask the users whether they would like to give us permission.
Finding 3: 5 of 7 participants would either use Google or Facebook to sign in.
Finding 4: At first, all participants thought that it was required to sign in or register to use our app. They couldn’t see a cancel icon on top of the “Sign in” screen that would allow them to skip the authorization process.
Solution 4: Majority of the users didn’t want to register on the first launch of the app because they wanted to explore it first. I suggest that we make the “Cancel” button much more prominent.
Finding 5: When 2 of 7 participants were trying to register, they tapped on the “Sign in” button instead of the “Register” button.
Solution 5: We should place a “Register” link in the “Sign in” validation dialog.
Home screen
Finding 6: On the home screen, users couldn’t find something interesting to watch — the participants were left with random recordings from various categories. Moreover, website thumbnails in the version (v 0.49) were randomly cropped.
Solution 6: The shortage of exciting content probably would lead to an increased level of app deletion after the first-time usage. To prevent it, we need to improve the onboarding experience for the first-time users and rethink how we form our thumbnails.
Finding 7: It was hard for participants to discover filtering options. Moreover, after selecting a filter all users waited for some confirmation message or “Apply” button to appear. Applying changes by tapping the “Cancel” icon was unnatural for our participants.
Solution 7: We need to improve our filtering experience: make it more discoverable and user-friendly. After tapping on the category, the user should be able to understand that the category filter was applied.
Finding 8: After pressing the play button on the video thumbnail, all participants expected that the videos would start playing automatically and that they wouldn’t need to press the play button once again on the player screen.
Solution 8: Enable autoplay when the user clicks on the video thumbnail.
Finding 9: It was hard for the users to rewind videos because every time they wanted to rewind, they needed to press a pause button.
Solution 9: Redesign mobile player so that it would be easier for users to perform basic tasks such as rewind, forward, etc.
Finding 10: All participants were feeling increasingly anxious during the slow video loading process. Some checked their wi-fi connections; some expressed their sincere dissatisfaction. After the app finished loading, some users got a “Something went wrong” error message which further increased their frustration.
Solution 10: On the next meeting with the developers, we need to come up with a solution on how we can decrease the loading time of our Screenlife recordings. Also, we should discuss how we can improve the error messages on the player screen.
Author screen
Finding 11: On the author’s profile screen, it was hard for the participants to understand whether the author would be interesting for them or not.
Solution 11: Possibly add a description field to “Add additional info” registration screen (TBD).
Video Player
Finding 12: Users who weren’t familiar with the Screenlife technology didn’t understand that every link in the video was clickable. Also, they didn’t know that they could interact with the recording — when users accidentally scrolled the video, they thought it was a bug.
Most participants thought that if they tap anywhere on the screen, the video would be paused, like in the Youtube mobile app.
“It seems like I’m in control of the recording, but at the same time, it looks like the author is. What is going on? Is it a bug? “
— Usability test participant about player experience.
Solution 12: We need to add a tutorial screen for the first-time users of the player. On this screen, by using text, graphics, and animation, we will explain that every link in the recording is tappable.
Finding 13: Videos were playing at low fps, causing a glitchy and unpleasant user experience.
Solution 13: TBD how to make the player experience smoother.
Finding 14: Participants couldn’t zoom video correctly.
Solution 14: We need to fix pinch to zoom in our mobile player.
Finding 15: 5 of 7 participants had troubles finding additional information about the video.
Solution 15: Make a much more prominent button for the video details overlay. In my opinion, we can achieve this by using like and comments icons on the nav bar (TBD).
Finding 16: When participants tapped on the “Like” button, the app was waiting for the server response before marking the video as liked. During this response delay, users tried tapping again on the “Like” button because for them it looked like nothing was happening.
Solution 16: As the user taps on “Like” or “Save” buttons we should instantly mark the video as liked/ saved. We shouldn’t wait for the server to respond.
Finding 17: When participants were asked to save video for later, 5 of 7 participants tried to do so from “Add to playlist” screen (e.g. Youtube mobile app). Currently, there is no such feature on this screen.
Solution 17: Users should be able to add to “Watch later” both from initial action sheet and from “Add to playlist screen.”
Finding 18: When there were no playlists created, participants expected that there would be a default playlist called “My playlist.” Users were disappointed when they understood that they needed to come up with a title for the new playlist.
Solution 18: We should make “Create new playlist” feature much more prominent, probably, as a list item. In the “Create new playlist” dialog title field should be prepopulated with “My playlist” text.
Designer’s notes
1) Snackbars animations for iOS need some fine-tuning.
2) If the user makes two consecutive actions, snackbar for the second action isn’t displayed.
Finding 19: After adding the video to a playlist, several users expected that the snackbar with a “To playlist” button would appear.
Solution 19: Replace current snackbar with a new one, that will contain “To playlist” or “View playlist” action button (TBD).
Recorder
Finding 20: All participants tried to create a new recording from the profile screen and were disappointed when they didn’t find any buttons or links that would allow them to do so.
Solution 20: Add the “Create new recording” button to the profile page.
Finding 21: All participants who weren’t familiar with the Screenlife technology entirely misunderstood the purpose of the recorder and were surprised when by tapping on a “Create new recording” button they were sent to the Google page.
“I don’t understand, what am I going to record here?” — Participant 4 on the recorder experience.
Solution 21: Same as for the first time users of the player — we need an additional tutorial screen in which with text, graphics, and animation we will explain how and what they can record.
Finding 22: 4 of 7 participants started recording without knowing what is going to be recorded.
Solution 22: In the introduction screen for the recorder we also need to show how to enable mic and cam recording.
Finding 23: Participants thought that the description field on the “Add information” screen was obligatory.
Solution 23: Put the “optional” marker near the description field.
Finding 24: On the “Add info” screen, 6 of 7 participants tried to add a new hashtag by tapping on the number sign symbol on the phone keyboard. In the current version of our mobile app, we prevent users from typing any non-alphabetical symbols in the “Hashtags” field.
The participants didn’t understand why they couldn’t type the number sign symbol and thought that it was a bug.
Solution 24: Add a number sign symbol placeholder to the “Hashtags” field so that the users would understand that they don’t need to manually type this symbol to add a new hashtag.
To learn more about the Screenlife app design process, check our UI/UX Case Study.
