After just a little over a month of design and development, I started testing once again. I sent out the application through social media, and not targeted to a specific audience. The test was an Open Analytics one, so the users were free to do whatever they wanted on the app and go wherever they wanted. Through Useberry, I can check the overall user journey and heatmaps to see what users clicked on. What I found interesting was that the first thing nearly everyone did was go straight to the profile menu to sign-in or create an account. I wondered if that’s because it is ingrained in our heads that to use most apps, the first page straight after the splash, we would need to sign in or sign up (cue design psychology research!).
Another thing I found through testing, was the users’ preferred sign-in methods. In the beginning, I was not sure if I should even have a profile menu altogether. I was torn between about its necessity and if it will bring anything beneficial to the users. However, I thought that with the functionalities I have (like saving restaurants, auto-fill for forms, saving bookings to ease future processes, etc.) it could be utilised, especially after the first round of results and the users’ want to have a profile. The most common sign-in methods were Google and Facebook, and through testing, the majority of users wanted to sign in using Google.
Besides online testing, I conducted a few in-person. I like doing this because you can see the users’ body language and expressions when using the app. This might sound ?? to some, but I find it really beneficial because you can really tell if the user is struggling, is frustrated, or if the process is going smoothly, which you can’t really see through online testing. Also, they tend to give straightforward feedback in the form of not-so-thought-out comments while they’re using it, which I believe is the most genuine kind of feedback compared to them waiting until they finish to think about what they just experienced and then having to articulate it; and how many times do we forget what we wanted to say by the time we are done!