Nadiya is a mobile app that provides therapeutic exercises for Ukrainian families affected by the war through a 14-day narrative game. It was developed in 2022 by Apart of Me, an award-winning mental health charity that combines child psychology with playful design and tech to guide children and families through loss and trauma.
Head of Design: Jenna Maudlin
Product Design Team: Carolina Ciardi, Geehae Jeong, Kat Stephens
My role: I was the sole designer responsible for the heuristic evaluation project and the next steps originated from it.
Tools: Figma, Notion
Overview
During the initial phase of the project, testing before the app's release was constrained by limitations in time, budget, and available workforce. As a result, testing was somewhat restricted. In response to this, a second phase of the project was strategically planned to focus on enhancing the initial user experience, improving accessibility, and ensuring usability. This phase also involved conducting a Heuristic Evaluation to identify and address any usability issues, thus aiming to deliver a more refined and user-friendly application.
Objectives
The purpose of this research was to conduct a heuristic evaluation of Nadiya following Nilsen Norman Group 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. The goal was to identify potential usability issues and provide recommendations for the app's improvement.
Methodology
To perform the analysis based on Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, the Nadiya app was downloaded and tested for 14 days - the full narrative length - by following the original ‘happy path’ and also stressing some scenarios such as: closing the app in the middle of a narrative; skipping screens when possible; leaving text boxes blank; etc.
The documentation of the project was made in the same Figma file where the Nadiya design project is. To provide clear visual documentation of the analysis, variable components were created and placed on top of the screen design where issues were found.
They follow the system below to identify the severity level and heuristic affected:
• Colour-coded by severity level.
• Number-coded to address affected guideline heuristic.
• Letter-coded (U) to address other usability notes.
Findings
At the end of the evaluation, a few bugs were spotted and 70+ notes were made in total, including 29 usability notes with recommendations and hypotheses to be tested.
The analysis showed that most issues were concentrated on the first day during onboarding and the first activity. It's important to note though, that during the first day, several screen structures that will be repeated throughout the game are presented for the first time, leading to issues that will be recurring being spotted at this point of the application.
Looking over all 46 heuristic notes, issues found in the application are related to only four of them and the majority it related to user control and freedom:
As Nadiya's design project is divided into four different Figma files, a table was created to compile all information from the analysis in one place.
The table is divided into days (rows) and severity levels (columns):
Delivery: Recommendations
To conclude the evaluation, a report documenting the project was created on Notion. It also includes a recommendation list for the second phase of the project containing 17 items organised in 5 clusters:
•Ensure instructions are clear.
•Offer clear user expectations.
•Avoid app inconsistency.
•Help users with error prevention.
Delivery: Next Steps
To help define the next steps, organise insights and group recurring issues, 49 cards were created based on notes from the compiled heuristic evaluation table:
A naming system was created to easily link the evaluation notes and respective Figma screens with the cards:
The cards were then grouped into three different sections:
a. Onboarding Redesign:
•Non-critical identified issues during Day 1 that require experience or screen redesign.
b. General Redesign:
•Non-critical identified issues after Day 1 that require experience or screen redesign.
c. Bug/Fixes:
•Critical identified issues within the application.
•Additional identified issues that don't require any redesign.
•Bugs.
Delivery: Solving Bugs and Critical Issues
Thanks to a partnership with AND Digital, the charity gained access to developers who assisted the project by tackling the cards listed under the 'Bug/Fixes' section. This allowed us to offer an improved user experience while our team focused on the redesign of the onboarding process.
Given that the charity primarily relies on volunteers, we did not have a project manager to oversee and facilitate this project's collaboration with AND Digital's developers. Consequently, I assumed the responsibility of managing this task.
Following a meeting with the developers, we prioritised the cards based on their severity levels and the technical challenges they presented. I was responsible for creating a Kanban board on Notion and writing task cards, which included:
• Problem description
• Acceptance criteria
• Task Definition
Throughout the entire process, I maintained direct communication with the development team to closely monitor the project's progress and provide support as needed. Following the completion of the work, I assumed the responsibility of thoroughly testing the application to ensure all changes were meeting the specified requirements and functioning seamlessly.
A new version of the app, featuring the implementation derived from this work, was released on September 6th 2023.
