Project Overview
As Head of UX while at Stride gaming I worked on a significant project to improve our payment processing gateway.
The project was split into key phases – research, user testing existing journeys design sprint workshops, rapid prototyping, user testing the improved version and final high fidelity designs with follow up AB testing.
The project team consisted of a senior UX researcher, a UX designer and a UI designer and myself as Head of UX/UI.
The first step was to recruit user testing candidates and record them interacting with our payment screens to identify potential issues.
User Testing Preparation
Tasks were written in order for the users to follow, this gives them a brief overview of what is expected from them, for example to use our dummy credit card and attempt to make a deposit into the account using a payment method which we provided them for the purposes of the test.
Besides the user tasks I wrote a brief walkthrough of the process to help users understand the testing process and help them feel at ease, highlighting that they are to think out loud as much as possible during the sessions and criticisms are encouraged and will not hurt anyones feelings etc
Once user recording consent is agreed upon we use an app called lookback.io to record users interactions both on screen and also their expressions via the device cam.
Notes are taken by one of the UX team as I facilitate the tasks with the users.
Using lookback to record
Notes and Ratings
Various rating and scoring templates are created ahead of the tests to capture scores on ease of use, quality, task success or failure rates. These are filled in at the end of each task with the user tester
Key Findings Report
After testing is completed all footage is reviewed and notes are placed into quick findings reports for other members of the business to see, a full report is used to drive the UX workshop
4 out of five users failed to make account deposits which showed the business that there is a major blocker in the payment gateway which was a result of the entire section having previously been built without any UX or design process but straight into HTML by developers
Improving based on feedback
Rapid Design Sprint
Pre-sprint planning to gather existing research and information. Starting from existing product mockups and taking into account recent user research.
Capturing existing competition for example – any potential competition that solves the same or similar problem that the sprint is trying to solve.
Also the team reviewed:
- User Testing Videos
- User testing report
- Competitor Research
- Call centre comments
- Key staff ideas
Throughout Understand phase we were working on defining
- who is going to be using the product
- How this product is solving a problem that those users have.
- What are the situations that users will be using the product or feature?
- What are the motivations behind using it? What are any outside motivators that might effect their use?
The team thought about what success looks like for the sprint.
The first exercise was
Define the Problem Statement
During this process I lead the discussion by writing statements on the whiteboard for everyone to see.
A breakdown of this process is as follows
* Write down all of the potential problems that the user has.
* What are all the jobs-to-be-done?
* What is the problem that this product is going to solve?
* What is the motivation behind what the user wants?
* As a group decide which problem is the most critical.
* Continue to refine language around the Problem Statement.
* Leave up in a clear visible spot in the room so that it is easy to reflect back on.
* Start with a feature wish list and condense into columns of priority for
Needs (aka Must Haves, Top Priority) Wants (Nice to Haves) Desires (Would love to have someday)
This activity is great for ironing out which features are most important and which could potentially be put on the back burner list.
Created Assumptions board
Throughout the sprint we have everyone write down assumptions that they are making or that they hear other people making and put them up on the whiteboard.
Start a Back-burner Board
We generated a lot of ideas throughout the sprint. Some of the ideas were be pertinent to the tasks at hand, but others, although interesting, were not relevant to this phase. We captured these good but not immediately relevant ‘back-burner ideas’ on a sticky note board.
Open Card Sorting
Card sorting helped categorise and prioritise features, ideas and different concepts so that it was easier to understand the problem. It s useful for working through user flow, moving features to the back burner board and merging similar ideas.
Mind Mapping Excercise
A warm up exercise to start generating ideas. Team members were given time to individually explore the problem using post it notes and whiteboard.
Crazy Eights Sketching Layouts and Features
This stage is great to generate a lot of ideas really quickly. With a forced time limit for each sketch people needed to think quickly. Doing this exercise repetitively generated a lot of varied ideas.
Storyboards
We drew a flow for the user by using Post-its as frames and writing out out a description next to it.
Silent Critique
This critique exercise helped get everyones input in a short amount of time.
Group Critique
This critique exercise was more open and allowed for a more detailed conversation. It gave each person that came up with an idea to add any remaining details or correct any wrong interpretations.
Dot Voting
At the end of the exercise we made heat map of the ideas people find really interesting using dot sticker voting techniques
Identify Conflicts
Throughout Diverge there is usually a few conflicting ideas. Conflicting approaches are helpful because they illuminate possible choices for your product.
We reviewed all of the assumptions that have been collected over the course of the sprint. Decided on a plan to test them.
Back Burner Board
As a group we reviewed all the Back burner ideas. Documented the ones that are still applicable and throw away any that weren’t.
Final Storyboard
In this case the Storyboard was a team effort and focused on what the will be prototyped. This was be done on a whiteboard so everyone could see it.
One of my UX team was tasked with creating prototypes in Invision to take out to a new group of user testers to see whether the same issues appear or whether they have been resolved by the work from the design sprint.
Re-testing with the newly created prototype saw a vast improvement with all testing candidates managing to make successful account deposits without any confusion.