Berenice Vargas

LIS 590IIL
Professor Twidale
11/10/14

User Study
1) Anonymize User
Users alias is Villa.
2) Background of User
Male. Works for the driving company, Uber. Spends roughly 10-14 hours a week
on the Internet, where approximately 20% of that time is spent on email and 80%
on researching and browsing. User mostly frequents Craigslist, news sites, and
YouTube. Does not have any social media accounts.
3) Details of Tasks
Application: Spotify for iOS
User profile: First time user
Equipment used: Apple iPhone 4 version iOS 8.1. User used his own iPhone and
installed a free version of Spotify via the Apple store. User upgraded to Premium
account for free for 7 days.
A copy of the tasks was given to the user in case he needed to refer to them after
I had read each task. A modified version of Steve Krugs usability test script was
used (see below). First I read Villa the script to ensure that I would not miss any
points, and also stressed that this session is to test the site, not the user.
Script
Before we begin, I have some information for you, and Im going to read it
to make sure that I cover everything.
Im asking people to try using this app to see whether it works as intended.
The session should take close to an hour.
The first thing I want to make clear is that were testing the app, not you.
You cant do anything wrong here. In fact, this is probably the one place
today where you dont have to worry about making mistakes.
As you use the app, Im going to ask you as much as possible to try to
think out loud: to say what youre looking at, what youre trying to do, and
what youre thinking. This will be a big help to me.

Also, please dont worry that youre going to hurt my feelings. Im doing
this to improve the app, so I need to hear your honest reactions.
If you have any questions as we go along, just ask them. I may not be
able to answer them right away, since were interested in how people do
when they dont have someone sitting next to them to help. But if you still
have any questions when were done Ill try to answer them then. And if
you need to take a break at any point, just let me know.
Do you have any questions so far? Thanks, Im good. Before we look at
the site, Id like to ask you just a few quick questions.
First, whats your occupation? Im an Uber driver. Do you listen to music
while you drive? I play music when I have passengers in the car, but I
personally like to listen to podcasts while Im driving.
Now, roughly how many hours a week altogetherjust a ballpark
estimate would you say you spend using the Internet, including Web
browsing and email, at work and at home? Id say about 10-14 hours a
week. Honestly, I dont spend much time on the Internet, only if Im
interested in selling or buying something on Craigslist. Or when Im
researching something for my parents. I mostly read news from different
sites or watch YouTube videos.
And whats the split between email and browsinga rough percentage?
About 20% email and 80% browsing, I dont have a Facebook or Twitter
page.
What kinds of sites are you looking at when you browse the Web? I like to
read news from different sources on there, so CNN, The New York Times,
and the Chicago Tribune.
OK, thanks, were done with the questions, and we can start looking at the
app.

4) What they did (Tasks I, II, III)

5) What is interesting
6) What they didn't do
7) What was surprising to you
8) Candidate reasons why you think they did and didn't do certain things it

Tasks
I. Text a song to a friend
II. Improve a radio station
III. Select a playlist, once there use the filter

b)

a)

Task I.
Text a song to a friend
a) Once the user logged in to Spotify, he
clicked the hamburger icon
b) The user selected the Search option
from the menu list to look for a
specific song
It was interesting to hear that because
the user recognized the hamburger icon
it was the first thing he clicked on.
Once the user logged in, he didnt
explore the landing page, instead
instinctively clicked on the hamburger
icon.

d)
c)

c) Once the user selected the Search

option, both the white search text box
and keyboard appeared; user typed
in a song title (note: song in this
example is not song user searched)
d) User clicked on the ellipses icon from
the Top Result option
It was interesting to hear the user decide
that he would click on the ellipses to
explore what options he had.
Surprisingly the user didnt scroll down to
explore the bottom of the results page.

e) Once the user selected the ellipses

icon, he was taken to a list of menu
options
f) User selected the Share option
For this task, the menu options listed
were self-explanatory, and so the user
did not display any difficulty in navigating
this space.

e)
f)

g) Once the user selected the Share

option, he was taken to a list of menu
options
Interestingly the user at first did not scroll
all the way down and as such did not
spot the text option.

g)

The information architecture in this menu

list would be better suited in another
order. Since it is more likely that people
have an email or text capacity rather
than a Twitter or Facebook account, I
would arrange the options as follows:
Email, SMS, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter,
WhatsApp

h) The user gave a quick look and

proclaimed that there is no text
option; he didnt know what SMS
stood for, but figured that it most
likely was the option to text, due to
the image clue
It was somewhat surprising that the user
did not know what SMS stood for. I
wonder if SMS should be renamed as
Text since most people use that word to
refer to sending a SMS.
Interestingly, Villa used prior experience
to infer the icon for text was a callout
bubble.

h)

i)

j)

Task II.
Improve a radio station
i) Once the user texted a song he
returned back to the list of options by
clicking on the hamburger icon
j) The user selected the Radio option
from the main menu
Surprisingly the user did not show any
hesitation in navigation the above steps,
especially this being the first time using
Spotify.

k) Once the user clicked on the Radio

option, he selected a station (note:
because the user had not previously
used this app, there were no radio
stations listed I realized this at this
point and created random stations in
order for the user to carry out this
task; Radio stations listed were not
the same stations created for the
user)

k)

l) Once the user selected a radio

station, a song played and the user
clicked the thumbs up, which
improved the station based on his
like/dislike
Villa uses Pandora, a music app that is a
competitor to Spotify. He mentioned that
Pandora also uses the thumbs
up/thumbs down option to tailor/improve
his music stations.
Villa used prior experience with Pandora,
since they use the same visual options,
to improve the radio station

l)

m)

n)

Task III.
Select a playlist, once there use the filter
m) Once the user improved a radio
station, he exited by clicking the
hamburger icon
n) The user wasnt very sure if he would
be able to access playlists in Browse
or Discover, but selected Browse
Interestingly, the user selected Browse
because he said the icon looked like a
stack of vinyl, which is where he guessed
would be the best place to locate a
playlist.

o) Once the user selected Browse it

directed him to the browse page,
which presented music lists both
horizontally and vertically; the user
scrolled horizontally and selected a
random playlist

o)

Surprisingly, the user did not browse

vertically. I believe it was because he
was doing a task and not really browsing.

p)

p) The user scrolled to the end of the

playlist, but there were no options to
select (note: playlist in this example is
not playlist user selected); the user
selected the ellipses
q) Follow option is in the main playlist
view

q)

r) A second Follow option is listed in

the sub-menu of the playlist
s) Once the user selected the ellipses, it
listed a menu of options, but did not
find a filter option listed; the user
selected Cancel, which directed him
back to the playlist

r)

Interestingly, the user went back and

clicked the ellipses a second time to
double check if he had missed the filter
option from the menu.

s)

t)

t) The user was getting flustered that he

could not find the filter option, but as
he scrolled up and let the screen hit
the top, the Filter box appeared
Interestingly, the user found the filter
option serendipitously by letting the
playlist continue to scroll as it hit the top
of the screen.

9) Relation to the readings

Two readings came to mind at the end of this user study, the first was Memory
Recognition and Recall in User Interfaces published on July 6, 2014 by Raluca Budiu.
The article differentiates between recognition and recall in terms of the number of cues
involved, it states the user recalls with fewer cues than they would with recognition. The
user in this study recalled the thumbs up icon from Pandora through recognition
(Facebook and many other apps/website use this icon)
The second article in Nielsens site was Icon Usability, published on July 27, 2014 by
Aurora Bedford. The article discusses the difficulty for icons to be universal. One way
to avoid icon confusion is to accompany text along with the icon. In this case, Spotify
includes a text label with each icon, which reduced confusion for the user.
10) Redesign Speculations
A future redesign based on Task I. would be to restructure the information architecture
in the menu list (see g, h), since it is more likely that people have an email or text option
rather than a Twitter or Facebook account, I would arrange the options as follows:
Email, SMS, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp. A future redesign based on Task III.
would be to delete the Follow option from the main playlist view (see q), since there is
also a Follow option in the sub-menu of the playlist (see r). This would provide space to
include the filter option in the playlist since the Follow is listed twice, yet the filter option
is hidden and must scroll down for it to appear.