CONTEXT

During my full time User Experience Design course at BrainStation I was paired up with a partner and given a design challenge to redesign a current mobile application (of our choice) using the 10 usability heuristics for design. We identified a specific task within the app and selected five heuristics to evaluate the usability.  Based on our findings, we worked together to create solutions via sketching, wireframing and finally, designing high-fidelity screens - ensuring our design solutions matched the existing brand and UI components as closely as possible.

PROCESS

Choosing a Task

Selecting a movie and purchasing tickets.

A crucial moment in any ecommerce platform is the payment page.  We wanted the process of buying a ticket to be seamless resulting in increased sales for the company.

Scoring System

We created a clear heuristic guide to use as a reference when identifying the current usability issues of the app.

Identifying the Issues

After analyzing the design and usability, we applied five out of the ten usability heuristics (from the Nielsen Norman Group) that we thought were appropriate to the app and scored them.

Evaluation Overview

We found the cineplex app (iOS) is usable and does complete the task at hand.  However, some of the key usability issues we discovered were inconsistency within the design, poor information hierarchy, and an unintuitive payment process.  This left us the opportunity to enhance the task flow experience of purchasing movie tickets on the app.

REDESIGN PROCESS

Looking for Inspiration

After identifying the usability issues of the Cineplex app, my partner and I searched for existing design patterns as inspiration for our redesign.

Sketch it Out

After accumulating designs that inspired us and discussing what worked best, we got out our sharpies, paper, and brainstormed the redesign.

WIREFRAMES

Hi-fi Wireframes

BEFORE & AFTER

Aesthetic & Minimalist Heuristic

Flexibility & Efficiency of Use

User Control & Freedom

Visibility of System Status

CONCLUSION

Reflection

Identifying the usability the heuristics usability was a challenging process for both Nick and I. We found that each principle were very vague and intertwined with other principles. With the help of the Norman Nielsen website, online resources (prototypr.io), and the chrome plugin UX check, we gained a better understanding of each heuristic we applied for this design challenge.

With our redesign of the Cineplex App, we felt that we did a substantial job in identifying the heuristic problems. We feel the redesign will help improve the usability as well as the user experience, resulting in an increase of ticket sales and a decrease of cart abandonment.

Next Steps

If given more time, we would have liked to conduct user tests to evaluate our redesign. We can synthesize the findings into session outputs and iterate the design. By doing this, it will allow us to elevate the design, usability, and user experience.

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