ROVE APP

Re-Designing The onboarding of Rove App

User Research

In June 2014, the Rove App was tested with thirty people ages from 20 and 30 to evaluate the product's ease of use. We have gathered the information through direct dialogue with the users. After ideating the concept and deciding the main research methodologies I lead a user testing initiative. We have used Lookback.io for recording user testing to be shared it with our collaborators and for remote research.

Our goal was to increase adoption and retention for the product. User research conducted to understand three things:

1. How easy the user onboarding is

2. What the user engagement level is

3. How users interact the application, e.g. possible pain points

Research consisted in testing the app with different demographics.

The Main Findings

Remote Research Tool: Lookback.io
Demographic: Ages between 20-30 
Main Focus: Understanding the users onboarding experience and figuring out their engagement level

Overall biggest finding is the application being hard to understand and use. The testers had trouble to understand the app so the feedbacks were mostly around minor things, e.g. placement of icons, use of map. (If the application is not self explanatory we cannot have user engaged and it makes the application a candidate for removal from the phone.) Ten testers among the group had difficulty to understand each individual screen's purpose and context. Overall they cannot do what they want. They have to behave what app restricts them to. However most of the times the way app restricts the users to is unintuitive and this creates frustration. Here are the details:

Finding #1: Missing the Most Important Part of the Main Screen

On the main screen the anonymous user image with the time of day icon is almost useless and it spends the most valuable area of the app: top half of the main screen. Users can not find a point of immediate interaction since we put them into the boring settings screen when the top area is clicked. Our most important assets are images and map info. If we can put map with some images from the user's photo library in as a carousel it can be more appealing onboarding.

Finding #2: Can NOT Make It Count

Saving, a.k.a. highlighting of a story, must be easier. We have “Make It Count!” call to action button, but when we press it is still not done. There is one more frictional step: pressing plus button. Even plus button is not enough there is one more step which is “Save to Feed”. But this button is lost in the same level with Facebook Share and More buttons.

Seeing three buttons confuses user. The primary action button must be more prominent, ideally bigger button, to be separated from others.
Even the user haven’t got lost in the journey, which is for completing “Save to Feed” mission, they got lost on the last step when they see the three actions in front (Save to feed, Facebook Share and More Buttons).

Finding #3: Story Representation on the Main Screen

Users tend to swipe photos horizontally, but they cannot. So this gives unintentional feeling. Putting three images for representing a story/day gives the feeling of an Instagram-­like app. We are not an photo app we are a story/journal app, to give this feeling we need the story summary of the day not just three images. 

Finding #4: Placing Ourselves

Users confused sharing the story or staying private. We need to place ourself in order to decide the feature set and design UI. Are we a utility app or fun/social app. Journal sounds like a fun app, automation sounds like a utility. We need to be in between so the interactions should be intuitive to support being fun to be shared with friends.

Finding #5: Lack of Social Interaction
Including the friends in the stories might be the critical thing to be social. It can give some viral boost to the app. 

Finding #6: Unreachable Story Map

Map is one of the good features but nobody realized that there is a map button. They tend to press day buttons that are on the lower right and left corners. Day buttons are more prominent than map button.

Finding #7: Spars Initial Data and “No Data” Screens

Sparse data leads to “no data” screen, which is a bad experience and making users lose the context. Sliding between days better goes to the next/previous story, not the next/previous day.

Finding #8: Overuse of Some Icons on the Same Page

Overuse of pencil icon on the moment screen. There are four of them, top two are repetitions of each other. This creates a conflict on user’s mind (what if I click this or that). Do we really need that? Look at the screenshot.