Improving on the MyUAL application to bring a more refined user experiences, security and personalisation. A new homepage layout with dynamic content such as, stories and Instagram will deliver up-to-date content to the user. Furthermore, new functions have been added to this build to allow the user to sign in to the application with bio identification, as well as personalise the home page layout.
Methods: Consultation, project planning, facilitation, user testing, teaching
User testing principles
2019, 4 months
UX Designer, Focus group facilitator, teacher (for the UX advocate programme)
HMW improve a service that UAL doesn't fully have control over, but to bring improvements across various areas based on insights from user feedback and focus group sessions.
Analysis of both the focus session and survey was done with the UX Researcher to find the main areas to focus on and to decide with the stakeholders what actions to take for improving the app
The goals and strategy was outlined together with the OSEP BA, Developer, UX and Communications team members, who all shared various insights and analytics in terms of what the students wanted to be improved and proposing time scales for each task
A write up on improvements to accessibility features for the service provider ExLibras was provided to bring the application to AA standards
From the areas of listing in the discovery stage two themes were created to provides focus on implimenting improvements to the application
Personalisation
• Homepage UI updates: 3:1 story tile and 2:2 social media tile • Giving user the opportunity to customise their homepage • Making certain tiles compusory • Changing the type of content that is shown based on student college type and staff Timetable
Features and Service integrations
Bring personalisation to the application was important, but implementing new features and services were key for creating a complete user expedience. Such fractures and services that were implied after, bio security, laptop availability
Security Update
Finger print and face ID (apple and Android)
Old User Journey Map
Previously a user would be taken out of the app experience when clicking on the 'Stories' tile, which opened in the browser. This dramatically decreased user engagement with the app.
Previously a user would be taken out of the app experience when clicking on the 'Stories' tile, which opened in the browser. This dramatically decreased user engagement with the app.
A discussion guide was created with the key focus areas split into two seperate tests due to the scale of updates to test. Homepage improvments and feature updates.
Using lean methodology to design, build and test every new development, which can then provide positive change for the new feature
The new user journey focused on improving in-app navigation and reducing the chances of sending the user to the browser.
The other focus was how to improve app connections such as, opening the Instagram app if the user has it installed.
With the new tile layouts and sizing it was important to illustrate the best layouts that gave the user easy access to the key services, but also encourages the user to explore more of the services that are lower in the list.
Setting up a draft plan of a UX Advocate Programme to help teach UAL staff members UX skills that they can use in their current job roles. The first lesson would come in the form of guerrilla testing the MyUAL app update
The mockup wireframes were turned into high-fi designs and passed onto the developer. The developer was able to replicate the designs to be ready for user testing.
To verify if the changes that were made had a positive effect guerrilla testing was fibre with randomly selected key users.
During the testing same UAL staff members had the opportunity to try doing user testing as part of the UX advocate programme.
Working with the comms team to promote the new application release through printed posters and digital banners
A collaboration with the communications team to provide training
Setting basic guidelines on best practices for types of content to use and notification usage
There has been a 30% increase in downloads (Total users = 27,691) and usage of the application compared from the previous year (August 2018 = 2,874 and August 2019 = 2019 3,254)
It has been a great experience to work on a phone application that has been created with a 3rd party software provider. It allowed me to analyse and deliver solutions which were in boundaries of the software's restrictions. From the user feedback and focus group sessions my team and I knew that we had to make many changes, but we could only priorities a handful of requests due to time and development restrictions. Therefore, I learnt how to priorities the key requested feature/service and decide collectively how we could deliver the improvement within the 4 months time scale.
Due to the Digital team not being successful with gaining more funding for the MyUAL application we are unable to continue with further improvements to the app. However, the UX team will continue to do more research on users' activities and habits, so were able to apply the data to new development opportunities when more funding is available.
