Case Study on the Amazon App
Project Background
From August 2021 to May 2022, I was assigned to do a Capstone Project in my graduate school in Human Factor & Ergonomics (MS). I chose the topic of learning about user experiences on Amazon for elderly users and redesigning the App.
Tools
Figma
Role
UX Designer / Researcher
Problem Statement
The study will measure how intuitive, comfortable, and confident they are when using the redesigned Amazon mobile application. The process of using the app is sometimes confusing and unnecessary information disturbs the user’s goal. The experience should be easy to follow and give users a delightful experience.
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to improve the usability of the Amazon Mobile App. Through this study, the researcher is trying to find if the new proposed mobile app design is more convenient to use than the existing interface.
Research Goal
Discover the pain points and problems
Identify the inclusive and exclusive target audience
Understand the experiences the elderly users have
Discover goals, needs, motivation and frustrations of the experiences with the app.
Discovery Interview
To find out the pain points with the Amazon App experience, discovery interviews were conducted. Before selecting the participants for an interview, a screener questionary was developed to identify appropriate participants.
Method
Screener interviews were conducted with 17 participants and 10 participants met the inclusion criteria.
Inclusive: Users who use Amazon App often - Who answered “Once a Week”
Exclusion: Who answered ‘Not very often” or “Once a month”.
Result
The interview results were analyzed from the ten participants. Most people buy their house essentials. During the discovery interview, participants brought up a couple of pain points. There were comments about confirmation message clarity, gifting is hard to find, changing information of address and payment method, and too much unnecessary information.
Findings
Too much content at a one time
Hard to find a gifting option
Changing the information of address and payment method is confusing
The order confirmation is unclear
Other findings (exclusive to this research)
Prime cancellation is hard to find
Tracking is unclear
Discount coupon is hard to find before adding to the cart
Ideation
Based on the interviews and following the interface guideline for elderly users, observing how they interact with the app, I created the informed decisions on how to redesign the App by sketching low-fidelity wireframes.
User Testing
The usability test was conducted remotely and participants were asked to evaluate the mid-fidelity re-designed Amazon App.
Overview
Sample size: 10 participants
Duration: 30 minutes
Inclusive target audience: Experienced users who are at least 65 years old age.
Procedures
After the consent form was signed and introduced the procedures and objectives of the study, the prototype link was provided and conducted the tasks. For the user testing, participants were asked to perform following the task . While participants were executing the tasks, the completion time was measured. At the end of each task, participants have asked to rate their impression of the tasks.
Prototype
Result
Throughout the session, participants were having a harder time interacting with a prototype because interacting with the mobile prototype with a desktop ZOOM was a different experience and the screen was small. As shown in table A, the overall average task success rate was 95.71%. The participants had 100% success on tasks one, three, four, and six. And, 90% for tasks two, five, and seven. There were usability issues related to these tasks and the prototype presentation. Disparate prototype presentation may have a significant impact on the study’s results.
System Usability scale (SUS)
The system Usability scale (SUS) is a reliable tool for measuring usability. I used SUS to evaluate the usability of the product and design in an effective way. And, it helps the UX practitioner decide if the product is effective, efficient and satisfying. SUS was asked to at the end of the usability test. Users responded to each question using a 5-point scale. Number one being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. By the calculation, the SUS score out of 100 was 88.75, which is between an excellent score.
practitioner decide if the product is effective, efficient, and satisfying.
Future Research
Future research may involve the eye tracking device to find where their eye stays the most and first to make a better usability decision. Also, recruit more researchers to help track the times, set up the station, and data collections. Moderating the testing, taking notes, and tracking the time had a limitation for a one-person task.