FEATURED
Ultimate Guitar
Guitar tabs
When not UX-ing, my guitar keeps my mind occupied. I use Ultimate Guitar tabs online or on the app on my iOS devices.
The prompt
One night while in the app, I started screen recording the interaction with a gut feeling that it might be interesting to look back on.
Initial Observations
- biased questions
- context switch between providing user information and asking user questions
- answers provided are biased in favor of the app, reducing users freedom (I did not feel that any of the answers were applicable to me, and there was no "other" option) --> this made me feel like I couldn't express my experience properly
- by the end, I wasn't sure what changes were made in the app
Context is key
I analyzed the app from the perspective of Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics as an objective anchor. I tend to color code my work to create clear visuals of the information.
Recognizing & avoiding bias
Immediately, small but prominent heuristic violations were identified, and documented below.
Recognizing & avoiding bias
The questions below on the left are the survey questions, and to the right are ways they could be refined.
Recognition over recall
Asking about specific features is an important part of UX research. However, assuming that every user is familiar with every feature creates a feeling left behind when users are forced to respond to questions about unfamiliar content.
Final Thoughts
Putting all the time and effort into creating user engagement for the sake of UX research has long-term ROI, but only when done properly.
While the visuals were engaging, I certainly finished this Human-Computer Interaction feeling like I was interacting with a computer - which - if you're new here - is not what we want.
Forcing users into answers that put a product or service in a good light, assuming that users are only having positive experiences, is an interesting way to paint the numbers.
Here is what I would change if I were designing this interaction:
- Start by prompting the user to answer a few questions, with the option to opt-out
- Ask unbiased questions
- Offer a multiple choice option for 'not applicable' or other experiences than those that are listed
- Build in conditional logic to get more specific user data
- Ask 'why' and give users the option to provide text answers
- Detail what changes were made and how the questions asked impacted the changes of the app (if at all)
Reviews in the Works
This work is not in any way affiliated with the official applications and is a critique of it's usability.
