Anyone who works on a product eventually reaches the point where distance is lacking. At some point, a routine and familiarity sets in that makes it difficult to objectively assess one's own product. It is easier to overlook weak points and tend to defend them.
But if you accept your own subjectivity and are open to feedback from outside, you have already gained a lot. For example, if you are writing a thesis or working on projects for your job, you can get feedback from your friends and colleagues. This is just as true for us and our apps, which is why we always ask for your opinion and are happy to receive any feedback - whether positive or negative. Our goal is to keep improving fileee so that the apps do justice to your everyday document tasks. For this, you not only need the right features, but also an intuitive operation.
In addition to the valuable feedback we get from you, we therefore also regularly invite people to usability tests to try out fileee on site - usually for the very first time. Last week, five testers came to our office again to test our iOS app extensively. In the usability tests, we are less concerned with bugs than, as the name suggests, with the usability of the app:
What is it actually like when you open the app for the first time? How intuitively can the app be used? Where are there problems of understanding? Does feature XY actually work the way we imagined?
Questions that can only be answered if you actually sit next to them live and look over a user's shoulder as they work with fileee.
Instead of classic tasks like "Scan a document with our app", we try to set up a kind of everyday scenario in which the testers have to solve problems with fileee. Packages, parcels and letters are brought in to simulate everyday paper chaos. We don't want to simply test individual features and functions, but rather observe interaction processes, i.e. how users cope with the app in everyday situations. In real life, for example, if you are looking for a document, you don't do it for fun or without a specific goal in mind.
In order to be able to evaluate the individual tests in a meaningful way, we take notes, video recordings of the testers using the app and film the screen of the devices.
However, the most important and informative thing is usually what the user says and thinks. This is where you get the most valuable information and find out how people perceive your app without bias.
During the entire test, the testers should therefore think out loud and express every little thought. In order for this to work, we must of course create a pleasant atmosphere and give the tester the feeling that it is not about her or his abilities, but about the fact that our app is being put to the test. True to the motto: "If there's a problem, it's our fault, not yours".
A usability test like this means a lot of organisational effort and is only ever a small sample that serves us as a tendency to see whether the development is going in the right direction. But the feedback we get from the tests makes up for the time spent. After the analysis, we always go to work with new ideas and impulses to further optimise our apps.
Did suggestions for improvement come to mind when you were using fileee? Were there moments when you just couldn't get any further? Then write to us: here in the comments, by email, via the feedback button in the app or on facebook, Twitter or Google+.
If you want to know more about usability tests, you can find some useful information here:
