In our second sprint for Neighborhood Deals, we made progress toward our ultimate objective: creating a yard sale and second-hand item app with unique features. This design and development phase focused on addressing key user stories that embodied the desired user experience. The sprint’s primary goal was to develop a fully functional wireframe for the app, enabling users to conduct cognitive walkthroughs based on our personas’ scenarios. The wireframe offered the necessary structure, functionality, and user flow for our app, allowing the cognitive walkthroughs to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of our current design.
Cognitive walkthroughs were conducted to evaluate and assess the usability, functionality, and overall user experience of a design or system. We provided two distinct scenarios from our personas to two of our peers to complete. One scenario was “Angela seeks to have a neighborhood yard sale,” and the other was “George is looking for a gun safe.” The objective of these walkthroughs was to emulate our users’ thought processes and actions while working through a task specified by a scenario. At each step of the task, the evaluator was asked to do three things. First, they needed to describe the action taken as explicitly as possible (clearly indicating their interaction with the wireframe). Next, they were prompted to answer two questions: A. Will the user know what to do at this step? B. If the user performs the correct action, will they know they did the right thing and are progressing toward the goal? By evaluating their responses, we gained valuable insight into potential usability issues and enhanced our understanding of the user experience.
The findings from the cognitive walkthroughs provided valuable insights into the user experience, revealing key areas for improvement and helping us better understand how users navigate and interact with our design.
The evaluator who simulated Angela’s scenario provided two suggestions for improvement. They recommended clarifying button labels, as some phrasing, such as “Sell your used item” and “Advertise your yard sale,” could be ambiguous for users trying to post about a yard sale. Additionally, they suggested that the “Input Additional Info” button could better communicate its purpose and destination. Moreover, Angela’s walkthrough revealed the need for a feature that allows users to share yard sales with friends and neighbors via links, social media, or text messages. This functionality will be incorporated into the final design.
The evaluator who simulated George’s scenario indicated that George would appreciate the ability to view correspondence between him and the seller of the gun safe he was interested in purchasing. The ability to inquire about or buy items is essential for a positive user experience because the app’s intended functionality of facilitating buying and selling would be compromised without it. Consequently, we plan to include this functionality as a menu option in the final design.
In conclusion, the cognitive walkthroughs yielded positive feedback. The simulations of our scenarios unfolded largely as expected, with the evaluators successfully completing the user tasks with minimal error. The identified areas for improvement provided valuable insights into the needs of our future users. As we move forward with our user experience development, we will concentrate on addressing these needs and developing a prototype that establishes the aesthetic and functionality of our final product.
During the second phase, two factors needed to be considered. Firstly, the evaluators who completed the cognitive walkthroughs were experienced in the field of user experience, which could potentially introduce bias into the steps taken. Secondly, the number of scenarios assessed through cognitive walkthroughs was limited. It might have been beneficial to evaluate a greater number of our scenarios using this method to gather more comprehensive feedback.