Flipboard App Usability Study
One of the Flipboard app’s functions is the follow button. The follow button function can be described as follows:
Following: similar to subscribing in YouTube, when you follow something you opt in for notifications about new content.
Flipboard also creates a list of what you are following. You can follow categories, social media topics, people (authors and Flipboard user profiles), and magazines.
After studying the follow button in Flipboard, I suggest that finding the follow button is a difficult task. What you’re following when you tap the follow button can be perceived as confusing. Through this study I’ll examine where the follow button is found and what it means when you tap it.
The Follow Button: Where is it?
The biggest problem with the follow button is finding it in the first place. In researching the follow button, I started by choosing an article and, from there, looking for the follow button. To show my findings, I created wireframes as examples of the app. My process went as follows:
First, I tapped the article itself and was taken to the article online. There was not follow button to be found there.
Then I tapped “Work-Life Balance” at the top. This took me to a page with a list of things that are related to the topic “Work-Life Balance,” but there is no follow button.
Tap the author name “Thomas Smale” and I’m taken to the article again.
Tap “#time management” and I go to the social media topic page for #time management. This page has a follow button in the corner.
Tapping “Angelique Langen” takes you to Angelique Langen’s profile and magazines. Angelique is a Flipboard user and there is a follow button on her profile.
I found the follow button for the topic just by searching around the article I found, but not for the magazine or the author.
What does it mean when you tap the follow button?
In Flipboard, you can follow a magazine, a social media topic, and a Flipboard user’s profile. How do you know what you’re following? Context. If you’re on the page for a social media topic, that follow button is for the social media topic. If you are on someone’s profile on Flipboard, you would be following that person.
While it is not impossible to find the follow button, it is also not in an obvious spot. You can find the follow button for a Flipboard user profile or a social media topic by tapping those elements when you’re reading an article. But you can’t follow the magazine or the author of the magazine. Those you have to search to find the follow button. This inconsistency can be confusing. To further study these perceived problems with the follow button, I will conduct usability tests.
Usability Test Using Eye Tracking Technology
To test the follow button, we took Flipboard to the UVU Vivint Smart Lab and tested the app with participants using eye tracking. As the participants completed the tasks in the test, special eye tracking glasses created a map to show where they were looking and how long their eyes focused on one spot.
The purpose of this test is to answer the following question: Can participants find the follow button?
Before the test begins, the adminstrator will determine the following information:
- Has the participant used Flipboard before?
If yes, do they use Flipboard frequently, infrequently, or very frequently? -If no, do they use any other news sites?
The test will be completed using an iPad. Participants will start from the home page. The participants will then be asked to complete the following task:
1) Find an article you’d like to read
2) Follow the magazine in which the article is published.
Two participants will be tested.
Results
The first participant uses Flipboard every day on her Android phone. She had trouble completing the first task because there was a problem with the internet connection. She wasn’t used to the design of the iPad so she searched for an article. There was no connection with the internet and it didn’t work. Eventually she chose an article on the main page. When asked to follow the magazine, she first tapped the picture to see if that would take her to the article. Instead, the page flipped. After that, her eyes scanned around the part of the article on the page, around the heading, around the edges. She flipped to the next page and scanned the next article. She flipped back and read some of the article. She said at this point she was looking for clues about what following means. In the end she decided she had followed the magazine by selecting a menu at the bottom of the screen.
The second participant had never used Flipboard before. First he chose the plus sign as a way to follow. When that didn’t work, his eyes scanned the corners and eventually paused. When asked what he was thinking at that point he said he realized he didn’t know how to follow. He finally tapped the check mark in the corner of the screen. It popped up a prompt that asked if he wanted to unfollow the category he was browsing. He tapped unfollow and determined he completed the task.
Neither particpants succeeded in completing the task and finding the follow button. This suggests that whether you‘ve used Flipboard before or not, the follow button is difficult to find. The participants went through multiple steps, flipping and tapping, while searching for the follow button. When no obvious answer presented itself, they looked for clues about following. Not only did they not complete their task but they wasted time searching for the follow button. To address these issues, I will propose revisions and a prototype and test these with more participants.
Building a Prototype
My proposed revision to the follow button has two parts:
-Make the follow button easier to find
-Clarify what you are following when you tap the follow button
To implement the first revision, I put the follow button next to the title of every article. This way, as you flip through the stories you can use the follow function right away instead of having to search for something. This was inspired by the eye tracking tests done in the last usability tests. Participants eyes were drawn to the titles and corners. With the follow button by the titles and/or corners, they are where the participants search for them already. The second revision was implemented through a drop-down menu on the follow button. When you tap the follow button, a menu drops down with the option to follow the magazine, the social media topic/category, the author, or the Flipboard user who has added it to one of their magazines.
With these two revisions in place, I brought the prototype to testing.
To view the prototype in Invision, click the link below: https://invis.io/59EX8BIKC#/268902389_IMG_0147
Testing the Prototype
Six people participated in the prototype testing. Two were fimiliar with Flipboard and four were not. For those who were unfamiliar with Flipboard, the following explanation was given:
Flipboard is a news app that gathers stories from various online sources. In Flipboard, there is the option to follow magazines, social media topics, and people.
Tasks were given to participants as follows:
1. Find the follow button within the Entrepreneurship category.
2. (Once task 1 was completed.) Follow the Entrepreneurship magazine.
Five participants found the follow button right away (within 5 seconds of navigating to the Entrepreneurship category). One participant thought the plus sign was the follow button. When that didn’t work, he decided that the red follow button was the indeed the follow button. Another participant seemed confused about which follow button to choose. He eventually chose the follow button on the Entrepreneurship magazine article. When asked why he chose that follow button he said it was because it was a little bit bigger than the other two and because it was the first one he was drawn to when he first saw the page.
When asked to follow the Entrepreneurship magazine, most correctly chose to tap “Follow Entrepreneurship.” However, one asked what was meant by “magazine.” Another participant took a few seconds deliberating over the other options and chose “Inc Magazine” because it had the word “magazine.”
Conclusions from this test are as follows:
- There is still confusion about the difference between the follow button and the plus sign icon that adds the article to your own magazine. To differentiate between the two functions, I suggest getting rid of the plus sign and making a button that says “Add to Magazine.” While this may look less attractive, it is possible that this solution will explain the difference between following and adding an article to a magazine.
- Finding the follow button was easier with this revision. In comparison to the first usability test when no one found the follow button, everyone found the follow button in this test.
- Though everyone found the follow button, what option to chose from the drop-down menu was less clear. This may be because of a lack of understanding that you can follow different things related to the article, such as a magazine or a person. This may be something that will be learned through experience with the app. The two participants who were familiar with Flipboard did follow the magazine and therefore completed task 2.
- By nature of the Flipboard design for the iPad, when you are browsing there are multiple articles on the screen at once. This means that if each article has a follow button there will be three or more follow buttons on the screen. This was confusing for some of the participants. It would seem appropriate to have the follow button appear only when the article is selected and takes up the whole screen. However, when an aritcle is tapped from the browsing screen, the participant is taken to an outside source to read the whole article. A follow button can’t be put on the outside source. Is it more important that the follow button is easy to find or that there is only one follow button on the screen at a time? I argue that it is more important that the follow button is easy to find so that participants can use it as they are browsing. When participants in the first test were looking for the follow button, they first looked around the articles that showed up as they were browsing. Then they tapped an article and looked for the follow button there. As it is now, there is no clear way to follow anything while browsing.
Conclusion
The follow button in the Flipboard app needs some adjustments to be effective. Based on study and usability testing, I’ve concluded the following:
- The follow button needs better placement. Ideally the follow button should be available while browsing placed by the title of the article.
- The follow button can mean you will follow people, categories, social media topics, or magazines. To clarify what you are following I suggest incorporating a drop-down menu in the follow button that lists the available following options. If you are viewing a magazine, the follow button drop- down menu would offer following the author, the Flipboard user, the magazine, or the topic. If you are just viewing a topic, it would only offer the topic. With the drop-down menu, participants will not have to search for the right follow button as they are reading or browsing. It will be all in one place.
- The plus sign to add articles to magazines and the follow button are often confused, as seen in the usability tests. To clarify the functions of each, the plus sign should be replaced with a button that reads “add to magazine” or “add to…”. This will separate the two functions because of the inherent explanation in the text of the buttons.
