Zocdoc Usabililty Study
Summer 2023
Project Overview
As an assignment in an advanced usability class during my master's program, I was tasked with a few classmates to conduct a usability study on the medical site Zocdoc. We focused on the mobile app experience of the platform. Our goal was to determine if the app achieves its goal of helping people find doctors in their area in addition to having an overall good user experience.
My Role
I was on a team of six, made up of myself and five other classmates. We each took equal roles in all of the responsibilities of the project, including creating a test script, conducting the usability tests, and sharing results.
Process
Build a Test Script
To begin the process and ensure we were all on the same page, my group members and I collaborated on a script we would use when we conducted the test. During this meeting, we discussed the major features of the app that we wanted to test and, as a result, created tasks that would prompt our participants to use those features.
Recruit Participants
Because this was just a homework assignment, we didn't spend any money recruiting participants and asked friends and family members who hadn't used the app before to participate. In an actual study, we would have sent emails and found incentives in the form of cash or otherwise to get participants within our target customer demographic.
Conduct the Testing
We each interviewed 3 people for a total of 18 usability tests. To share our data with our group, we recorded each session and shared the video for each of us to review and analyze in our final report.
Analyze and Report Results
Following the testing sessions, we reviewed each other's recordings and built a report to showcase our findings. This report included information about the study, task success rates, primary issues that needed to be addressed, and some recommendations. A link to this report can be found below under "Results."
Challenges
Defining Tasks that Give Good Insights
When building a usability study like the one conducted in this test, making sure your tasks are formulated thoughtfully and without leading the user is essential. It can harm your findings if the tasks don't put the participants in a mindset similar to how they would approach the application in their daily lives. This project was a good exercise in helping me understand what questions guide a user to do something a specific way, and what questions prompt a more exploratory and natural approach.
Finding Actionable Insights From the Data
By the end of the testing, we had hours of video to sift through to understand the most significant pain points users experienced when using the app. Watching these videos was tedious but necessary to ensure the efforts to perform the tests brought the best insights on improving the app. Because of our data, we found several notable improvements that could improve the app. This was an excellent learning experience to understand how to glean insights from a lot of data.
Results
The final report was presented as a pdf presentation. Although Zocdoc didn't hire us to do this testing for them, it was enjoyable to go through this exercise to learn more about usability testing and the information that can be learned from a well-structured research study. A link to download my final presentation can be found here:
Reflection and Takeaways
I enjoyed working with my team members and interacting with participants during this project. Conducting these tests with different moderators and with various participants produced insights that wouldn't have otherwise been discovered. This shows the importance of different perspectives in the realm of UX research and is something I will keep in mind in the future.
If you want to put me to work solving the biggest pain points for your business, reach out to me here, and let's talk!
Let's Work Together
There was an error sending your request. Sorry for the inconvenience, please try again later.
Your message was sent successfully, I will be in touch soon.
LinkedIn
GitHub