Industry: Mobile
Featured Methods: 1-on-1 Usability Testing
A major media company wanted to learn more about how they could improve the mobile experience for early-adopter consumers. They had developed a mobile application and a promotional site to optimize its installation and usage. AnswerLab’s team was asked to assess the usability of the client’s mobile service installation and general usage.
We knew that direct, qualitative observation would be the key to unlocking the answers. We conducted three days of usability testing, utilizing an in-depth interview methodology with 15 target consumers who primarily used one of the top 5 mobile devices tested. Our interviews were crafted to study a number of aspects of the mobile user experience, including downloading, installation, general use, overall usability and even the broad mental model users constructed to help frame their mobile experience.
Our interview findings revealed that users of some brands of mobile devices faced difficulties with the service, so we recommended new ways to present installation instructions to this user segment. The depth of content the service offered – a key competitive differentiator – was not easily discoverable, so we suggested how to better surface content without making users “dig” for it. Finally, some users didn’t conceptualize the mobile service in the way that it had been built; their mental model of how the service should work didn’t match how it actually functioned. We mapped their expectations and concepts of the service to allow for further usability improvements to be made. Based on the list of prioritized solutions that we provided, the company is driving increased adoption of their mobile service by continuing to improve the service over time.
