Firstly
I am currently bound by an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) with the project. I have changed the name of the product to “C-Mail”, and some minor details below, to protect its identity and stay within my rights to include this work in my portfolio without breaching the agreement.
Background
“C-Mail” is a web-based email service that is was showing its age and was in need of an overhaul. They have over 80 000 users so far but their growth has been slow. As a result, they have asked that I investigate the shortfalls of the overall usability of their email service by comparing the successes of bigger and widely adopted systems and find ways to improve and fix those issues in order to grow their user base.
Stakeholders involved
At the beginning of the project, I met with the various stakeholders to establish a professional relationship. I used the initial briefing session to gather information and insights about the project to determine what the objectives of stakeholders and the project were, to formulate a project plan. I used this plan to extract the 10 most important stakeholder objectives and motivations to help guide my research.
John Doe (Project Sponsor) provides the vision and steers development.
Objectives: Aim the platform at users who value strong security features, implement the latest tools/frameworks, create a great user experience through an appealing UI.
Jack Doe (Technical Developer) develops a secure product utilising the latest tech.
Objectives: Utilise the latest tech, implement a robust set of security features.
Steve Doe (Conceptual Designer) designs a UI that is aesthetically pleasing and easy for customers to use and understand. Objectives: Ensure the UI communicates security features, is engaging to use, is in line with current trends.
Jane Doe (Sales and Marketing) sells, supports, and ensures the product gets wide distribution.
Objectives: Communicate the use of advanced tech and security features.
Bob Doe (Product Tester) ensures that all elements of the project come together and work in a cohesive and sensible manner to fulfill the product objectives.
Objectives: Determine what users look for in the system, find ways to set C-Mail apart.
Hypotheses
Based on my interaction with the stakeholders I then formulated the following hypothesis about their users. C-Mail users are between 15 and 65, from all walks of life that use the system for both professional and personal use. They communicate with people and businesses by sending and receiving emails. They set up daily tasks, reminders, schedule meetings, keep track of their work and personal lives through the use of calendar events. They want a feature-rich system that is secure and easy to use and don’t have the patience to hunt for the tools and functions to get their work done.
Research process
The research methods I used for gathering evidence touched on qualitative, quantitative, and behavioral methodologies. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, only two of the five requested users were tested.
Recruitment survey
I use a recruitment survey to filter out any users who will not reveal useful information about the user interface, also to help reveal information about the user that indicates why they are suitable candidates to include in my user tests, keeping in mind not to allow any selection-bias in the process.
| Question | Rationale | |
| 1 | Provide a short description of what you do. | To determine what the user’s professional capacity is. We assume most users are working professionals. |
| 2 | What is your year of birth? e.g. 1985. | To determine the age of the user. |
| 3 | How many times per day do you access the internet? a) 1-2 times per day b) 3-5 times per day c) More than 8 times per day | To determine what the user’s access to the internet is, more frequent being more accessibility. |
| 4 | Roughly what percentage of your daily internet activity is email-based? | To determine what the user’s email use is while on the internet. |
| 5 | How often do you check your emails daily? a) 0-2 times per day b) 2-4 times per day c) More than 5 times per day | To determine how frequently the user checks their email. |
| 6 | How would you rate your technical knowledge of email services? a) Not good, I don’t really know how to use email b) Good, I can accomplish what I need to without knowing all the tools c) Excellent, I’m very proficient and consider myself an expert with email | To determine the user’s technical knowledge of email services. |
| 7 | How much of your daily email use is for business use compared to personal use? a) I mostly use email for professional use on a daily basis. b) I mostly use email for personal use on a daily basis. c) I use email for both professional and personal use on a daily basis. | To determine the user’s balance of professional vs personal email use. |
| 8 | On a scale of 1 – 5, how important is email security to you? (1 not important at all, 5 the most important feature) | To determine how much value the users place on email security. |
| 9 | On a scale of 1 – 5, how important is using the latest technology to you? (1 not important at all, 5 extremely important.) | To determine how much value the users place on new technology. |
| 10 | Are you comfortable with being recorded for internal research purposes? a) No thanks, I don’t like to be recorded. b) Sure, I don’t mind being recorded for research purposes. | To ensure we can test appropriately with the user. |
User profiles
The user profiles provided me with relevant information to understand what kind of users each of them are, as well as a description of the kind of usage they require from the interface.
| User 1 | User 2 | |
| Age | 33 | 23 |
| Occupation | Privacy Regulatory Specialist | Studying + working part-time |
| Relevant background information | Working professional who places huge value on the privacy and security of information. Works long hours and spends most of her time in front of their computer at home. Uses emails for work, but has a secondary email account for personal use. | Student working a part-time job. Currently studying for masters. Works mostly from home but occasionally takes their laptop to a coffee shop for a change of scenery. |
| User requirements | Secure login, send and receive secure emails, attach and receive sensitive files, set up daily tasks, coordinate calendar events with colleagues, set up meetings, create and edit signatures, out of office responses. | Send and receive emails, attach and receive sensitive files, set up daily tasks, set up calendar events. |
Both users share a similar need for certain functions in the system, but place importance on security and other functions in different ways, which will be an important distinction to look out for in testing.
At this point, I compiled a usability questionnaire for the testing phase and went into testing with the users. These methods allowed me to determine the way in which email web clients are used in order to evaluate whether my initial usage hypotheses was correct. I tested against Gmail and YahooMail’s interfaces since these are two of the most popular and successful email web clients.
Systems Usability Scale (SUS)
SUS allowed me to determine the level of usability of C-Mail by drawing comparisons between the Gmail and YahooMail systems and measuring those comparisons against the Likert scale.
Measurability Requirements
Measurability Requirements allowed me to measure specific tasks in an objective way, for example seeing how long a task would take to complete on one system versus another and measuring the time difference between them.
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate Testing allowed me to test different versions of the same functions on the two systems, in order to draw a comparative view. These tests exposed deep insights into how users interact with the system and what they expect from it, using this information I was able to apply my learnings to the wireframe designs later on.
Hypothesis evaluation matrix
At this point, I return to my original hypotheses and evaluate whether or not my first assumptions about the outcomes of the experiment were correct.
Findings and recommendations
Testing has revealed key important areas to focus on for the creation of an effective new C-Mail interface:
Signup
Findings: The signup process asks for too much personal information and makes it mandatory for users to include this information, this led to a frustrating signup experience.
Recommendation: The signup form length wasn’t an issue for the users, however, providing mandatory information such as their gender and mobile numbers was. Changing these fields to be made optional rather than mandatory will greatly improve the signup experience.
Icons
Findings: Users spent more time than they liked searching for the tools they needed the most (Calendar, Tasks, Contacts) and resorted to hovering over all the icons on the interface to find them. The design language of iconography used for tools such as the calendar, tasks, and contacts are confusing to understand and don’t accurately represent their purpose.
Recommendation: These icons should be made larger, placed more prominently in the UI, and given labels. More importantly, they should also be redesigned to make them easier to understand, accurately reflecting their purpose at a glance.
Confidential email functionality
Findings: Testing showed that most users weren’t aware of this functionality at first glance, and when they tried using it they found the settings too confusing to understand.
Recommendation: Instructively showing users how to use these settings will improve usability. Including prominent iconography on the new email window will draw users’ attention to this function. Simplifying the settings to allow users to easily set expiration dates and times, and adding an option to lock that email from chosen users after it expires will greatly improve usability.
Theme options
Findings: Users struggled to find the theme settings and didn’t understand why their choices weren’t being reflected in real-time.
Recommendation: Making the settings button more prominent in the UI and allowing the user to see a real-time update of the UI when selecting theme options will greatly improve their experience.
Form fields
Findings: Location fields were difficult to use as they did not have any form of predictive text built into them. Users were also worried that if they entered information into them incorrectly, it may cause issues with meeting up with their friends or clients in the correct locations.
Recommendation: Adding predictive text to location fields, that get populated through a service like google maps, is a must-have for reducing user error and improving the experience.
Prototype
My prototype touched on all the key points I learned from my user research testing.
Simplifying the journey for the user by adjusting the size, iconography, and positions of calendar events, tasks, and contacts tools. Simplifying the journey for theme customisations and making it easier to find, understand and use. I addressed some of the stakeholder’s security objectives by modifying the security functionality on emails. Additionally, I worked on the ‘secure email’ wording and layout to make it more understandable to the user as this was initially found to be confusing.
All of these usability decisions were influenced by the user research information I gathered in testing.
Below is a list of 15 interactive elements and a brief motivation of why I made them function as I did:
Compose button – This button was made large to attract the user’s eye as user testing showed it was one of the most important elements of the UI.
Logo home button – I made sure that the logo acted as a home button allowing the user to quickly find their way back to the inbox page if needed for ease of use.
Task / Calendar / Contacts back button – This back button was placed in the same area on the UI for the 3 different tools to ensure consistency in the design and also to ensure the user has an easy time navigating back to tasks, contacts, or calendar when needed.
Email hover options for inbox – This functionality is used to ensure that users are able to quickly action common tasks on individual emails without needing to go through multiple steps in the UI.
Select a background image – This functionality is used to give users a quick and easy way to skin their inbox for a personalised experience. I also made sure that the user could upload their own image to further enhance this personalised approach.
Create event button – This button was carefully positioned on the UI and designed to catch the user’s eye, allowing them to quickly and easily execute their tasks without needing to search for the button, as was shown in the user testing for Gmail and Yahoo Mail.
Choose layout options – User testing showed that in the mind of the user layout options were essentially theme options, so I placed them under themes and thumbnailed the buttons as well as labeled them to ensure the user understood their function.
Email buttons – These buttons were imperative to have so that the user can easily switch to and from emails without needing to go back and forth from their inbox and draft box.
Email maximise button – Having this function allows the user to come back to an email at a later date or switch between multiple emails without breaking their workflow by having to navigate to and from inbox and drafts.
Secure email button – Adding this function was important for the stakeholders, as well as the users by granting them control over the security of their emails.
Secure email options – The functions granted to the user in this dialog were designed to give the user full control over how other users consume or use the information in that email.
Settings button – User testing showed that the settings options were hard to find on other mail systems. Placing it and sizing it as I did, ensured it was easy to find and use for the user.
Main tool buttons – User testing showed that these tools (Calendar, events, tasks) were often difficult to find in other mail systems. I made sure to upsize the buttons and place them in a prominent spot for easy access and use.
Theme colour selector – This function allowed the user to quickly and easily customise the look of their inbox.
Create a task button – In order to ensure the user has a good understanding of how their inbox would look and in real-time, I chose to implement this function to show the user a preview of what their inbox looks like as they make changes. User testing showed this to be an important factor to consider.
Finally
As part of my stakeholder handover, I complied a UX roadmap document describing the process that has been followed, the decisions that have been made, and the results that were achieved, as well as a design brief, to act as a starting point for aesthetic design considerations :
- Project summary
- Background of UX study
- Stakeholders involved
- Problem set
- Hypotheses
- Methodology
- Personas identified
- Research process
- Findings
- Recommendations
- Design Brief
