Gogobeans had been growing exponentially, however, they had been developing on the fly and had no formal usability testing performed.  Our team designed and conducted a task-oriented usability lab study, with the goal of informing the product design and eliminating common usability problems and frustrations. In addition, the findings of this usability study might serve as a benchmark against which to judge the usability of future iterations of Gogobeans.

How we tested

We had participants who had no experience with Gogobeans perform nine tasks in a controlled lab setting using Techsmith Morae for observing.  Tasks were focused on participant use of Gogobeans as a means to share online content with friends. Tasks included registering for an account, uploading, sharing, and deleting photos, adding a friend to their Gogobeans network, and performing basic operations using the unique terminology of the website.  Data was collected for task time, number of clicks, error and completion rate, the participants feedback during the study using the think-aloud protocol, participant emotional reaction (recorded via video), and subjective ratings from the participants on overall ease of use.

Results were prepared in both a formal written report as well as presented to an audience including the stakeholder, and received high praise. Changes to Gogobeans began to take shape and design was given higher consideration as a result of our prepared report.

Project partners:  Mark Lammers & Rebecca Destello