JADE NING


ITERATIVE DESIGN & USER TESTING:
DESIGNING FOR STARTUP COMPANY TALAR



Talar is a company that provides food delivery service.
They deliver groceries to stock up their customers’ fridges every week.



Jade Ning / Kennedy Liu / Angela Sun

November 2019





INTRODUCTION



Talar is a online food delivery service different from any others. You will first build a list of the items you always want to have in stock before the care team visits your home. Your care team visits your house once a week — organizes, removes and replenishes inventory as needed. You return home to a full fridge and pantry. Nowadays, some people are too busy to go to the grocery store in person, food delivery service is a good choice for them to save time. This service could also be beneficial to people who live far away from grocery stores and elders who have difficulty to go to the grocery stores. We like that the service of Talar closely related to our daily life so we decided to design an interface for Talar.


We decided to design an app for this company. For long-term customers, it is necessary to have a mobile app. With a mobile app, customers can receive a notification on the day of delivery and track their package information wherever they are. It is also more efficient to keep users logged in on an app instead of visiting a website frequently.


Before starting designing the app, there are some questions we need to think about. First of all, what is a group of people that will be directly impacted by your interface? Consumers including People who are too busy to go to the grocery store, people who prefer a healthy lifestyle and people who live far away from the grocery store will definitely be affected. Besides, delivery man will be affected because more occupations will be provided with the expansion of the food delivery service.


The service may also indirectly impacts industries such as restaurants and grocery stores where people buy or eat food. Farmers will be impacted by this interface because when this company developed to a certain scale, they may be able to buy food directly from farmers.


In order to ethically handle these effects, here are some aims we are going to address in the design of the mobile app of Talar:

• Make customers understand that the delivery service delivers food straight to the client’s fridge.

• Users should be able to check the basic information of the delivery man on the app. The app should help build trust between the delivery man and the customers.

• The company can potentially help farmers sell the extra and unsalable products by promoting the products on the app.



Sketch



With the aim of clarify that the delivery service delivers food straight to the client’s fridge and help build trust between the care team and the customers, we created 4 sets of sketches featuring different functions. For example, the set of sketch below features the flow of the wireframe.





High-fidelity prototype



We combined aspects of our sketches in the final hi-fidelity prototype.

Users can do the whole sign-up session and see the delivery status and also view their plan. For the sign-up session, due to its complexity, we made a progress bar to visualize the progression. Besides, since people who prefer to cook at home may include elder people, we enlarge the size of the font to make it easier to read. We also add new functions for signing up: sign up later and choose a plan later. This provides users a chance to learn more about this service.





Sign up & build shopping list



4 main pages



Delete items from shopping list



USER TESTING



After designing the interactive prototype, we proposed a test on UserTesting.com to test the basic functions of this app. Our task for the users is building and adjusting the replenishing list. The task consists of two sub-tasks:

1. Sign up for the app and add an apple to your list during the sign-up process.

2. After completing signing up, please delete the apple from your list.


We also asked some questions about the testers’ experience using our prototype:

1. Did you understand that Talar delivery service delivers food straight to the client’s fridge?

2. Is it clear that the quantity of the food on your list is not the amount every visit from Talar will deliver, but rather the amount that Talar will replenish up to?

3. Is the sign-up process confusing?

4. Is it easy to figure out how to delete things from your list?



USER TESTING result



All the testers completed both sub-tasks smoothly and they thought both tasks were very easy. From an effectiveness standpoint, all users were able to complete both tasks successfully. All users took a straightforward approach to the task except for one user which clicked on the profile page instead of the cart, but there is a back button so this error is non-fatal. Efficiency wise, all users were able to complete the task somewhat of a timely manner. However, some users stated that the + and - buttons on a small phone screen is hard to get to, also it is not feasible for large orders. One solution to this problem is to change the + and - buttons into a text box or a scrolling pup-up number text box. This eliminated the need for repeatedly pressing small buttons. In terms of satisfaction, all users said the tasks are simple. The only thing is that some users are confused by the items already in their cart. The items in the cart were present as a stand-in for prototype, so this should not be an issue in the final app.


One tester suggested instead of having the information of “How Talar Works” as an individual step of signing up, we could make it into a link on the login page to make the sign-up session less complex. According to the answers we got from the questionnaires, it is not very clear that the quantity of the food on your list is not the amount every visit from Talar will deliver, but rather the amount that Talar will replenish up to. We could also add a sentence on the main page to remind users about this. Another potential change is to add a completion page at the end of the sign-up session so that it is clearer for the users when they finished signing up.


One example of the questionnaires we received:





Analysis and reflection of usability testing experience



According to the users’ feedback, they are expecting a fully functional app. They tried to click on options that lead to nothing, and enter in their info into the text boxes. Perhaps a solution is to put in information already in the text boxes, this way the tester would not be confused by unable to enter info. We learned that user testing could help us find bugs hidden inside the prototype that we have never encountered when we tested it on our own. The testers are professional - they have border views toward the task and they may come up with useful suggestions. There are also many successful aspects of our user testing: The structure of the prototype is great; users enjoy the light background and the size of the typeface; the function is also clear and easy to use.



Jade Ning



jning01@risd.edu