Alltrails
A Heuristic Evaluation and Redesign
Overview
This project was completed using an interdisciplinary team of computer engineers and human factors professionals. Our team, Cheaper, Better, Faster conducted an evaluation and redesign of the Alltrails mobile app. The project was completed in two stages. The first stage involved user research, task evaluation, heuristic evaluation, and a comparative usability test. the second stage was a design sprint that combined the information learned from the previous stage and an iterative design process to develop a high fidelity clickable prototype. The high fidelity prototype was tested and compared to the performance of the original Alltrails design.
Our team was able to demonstrate significant improvements in task completion, task time and error rates for 4 out of 5 tasks.
A complete copy of our documentation can be found here.
Alltrails: Mobile App Redesign, ISE-217 Conference Poster
Product Evaluation
Process: The product evaluation stage consisted of three steps. The first was to gain an understanding of or users. we conducted a user survey, a task evaluation and derived thee user personas. Personas were utilized throughout the design stages in order to better communicate between team members.
The second step involved a heuristic evaluation of the current Alltrails mobile application using established human factors principles and a competitor analysis of apps within the market space.
For the final step, a comparative usability test was conducted. Five tasks identified in the task evaluation were tested on both Alltrails and its main competitor. In addition to documenting comments and behaviors, we chose five metrics on which to quantitatively analyze the AllTrails user interface. These metrics were based partly on the ISO 9241-11 recommended metrics for usability. The five metrics chosen were: Task completion, Time on task, number of errors, subjective usability and subjective satisfaction.
Results- a total of 10 suggestions for enhanced usability were identified in this report. these suggestions were prioritized and utilized in the future redesign.
Product redesign
Process: Using information gained from our product evaluation, we practiced an iterative design process beginning with low fidelity wireframes and gradually moving to a high fidelity prototype. down the hall-style usability test were used at the low fidelity stages to obtain proof of concept and justify moving forward with high fidelity designs and prototype. A formal usability test was conducted with the high fidelity prototype with five participants from our established demographics.
Results: We demonstrated a significant reduction in task time, number of errors for 4 out of 5 tasks. Completion rates also increased for the same 4 out of 5 tasks. After evaluating the results, we determined that there were significant problems with the wording of one task which contributed to the usability performance observed. Our redesign obtained equivalent subjective satisfaction and usability scores compared to the original design.
Conclusion
Based on the results from our usability tests we determined that our redesign was a significant improvement. Users were able to complete important tasks faster and with fewer errors while maintaining a high level of satisfaction and usability subjective ratings.
