Flickr

Team Members

Fatemah Aloudah

Malvika Bansal

Shivin Saxena

My Contributions

Cognitive Walkthrough

Documentation

Heuristic Evaluation

Usability Testing

Issue

Many of Flickr's basic functions, like creating albums and deleting photos, can be confusing and cumbersome to users. My team was tasked with performing UX research to uncover Flickr users' biggest issues, and report design recommendations based on research findings. 

Process

To get started, our group completed a cognitive walkthrough and expert review of the desktop and mobile application. We identified many areas of improvement for the applications. Our team then created various tasks for participants to complete during the usability test. A total of 11 users participated in this study. In order to clearly view participants' movements during the study, we used Camtasia for audio and video recording on the desktop. With mobile users, we used Mobizen and MyPhoneExplorer to be able to view their actions on a mobile device.         

Outcome

With testing, it was found that the mobile application had an SUS score of 22 while the desktop score a 66. The mobile app's low score is attributed to many users feeling that tasks were cumbersome to complete. For example, when mobile users were asked to create an album, all failed to complete this task. This was due to Flickr's word usage (i.e. "Sets" instead of "Albums") and placement of other options did not coincide with mobile industry standards. For instance, in order to sign out of the application, users must go to Settings. We concluded our research report with design recommendations to make the user experience easier and more intuitive.