Photo by Vojtech Bruzek on Unsplash
Self-Initiated Design-Thinking Project • User Research & Analysis • UX/UI Designer
PROJECT BRIEF & MY ROLE
With Mobile Devices surpassing Desktop use in 2017 and an estimated 6 Billion Mobile Users
in 2020, the brief was to create an easy to access Personality Test App that would be affordable
for small or independent Counsellors and Psychotherapists or Psychology Students learning
about Personality Theories.
The App had to be easy and intuitive to use, and had to adhere to the fundamentals of
Experimental Psychology: namely that there should be no inadvertent influence on the User
except for the question they are answering.
This was a User-Centric Design Thinking Project, where I was UX Lead, Researcher, and UI
Designer, performing every role throughout, producing iterations to create the Prototype. With
this being done in my own time I had to fit it in alongside work and Family obligations as well.
With this variety of roles, I had to organise the overall project. This meant empathising with the
user, performing the Research on finding a Personality Test that could be used and analysing
the Apps currently on the market. From this research I defined the cause of the problem,
formulated ideas of how to address the issues, before building the Prototype and testing to
make sure it worked.
As a graduate in the field of Psychology, creating and performing Psychological Experiments
was an intrinsic part of my degree qualification. What I learnt I carried forward into this Project,
namely that the participants involved in any test should not be distracted or influenced by
anything except for the stimulation that has been specifically chosen. In this case it was the
questions being asked to ascertain The Big Five Personality Traits of the individual.
This was a self-initiated, Design Thinking project, designed to address the problem that the
current Big Five Personality Apps inadvertently influence the user when they are taking the
test. I created a Prototype that minimised the impact and didn’t fall into the same traps as
the other Personality Tests. The redesigned Big Five Personality Test App created a more
emotionally neutral journey through the 50 Questions, which is aligned to the principles of
Experimental Psychology.
The first stage was to understand what the current Apps on the market were doing well, and
where they needed improvement. To Empathise with the users, I conducted a series of usability
tests on two Apps, one from Pygmalion, and the second from My Skills Profile Limited. During
this initial phase I also mined the message boards, looking at the reviews and doing Competitor
Benchmarking for each App.
During the Usability Test one glaring problem on both Apps was that the questions were on
one page each and this meant that if the participant made a mistake or wanted to change their
answer, they had to restart the test completely. Because of the nature of Personality Tests a lot
of questions have to be asked, in this case 50 Questions are needed, so it means if a User
wanted to change their answer, they would have to start the 50 Questions all over again.
When I used the My Skills Profile Limited App there wasn’t any feedback when answering the
questions, so it wasn’t clear if my answer had been registered or not. If the answer I had chosen
lit up or was highlighted in some way, it would make the already long test quicker and easier
to use.
With the My Skills Profile Limited App there was also the extra step of having to press the ’Next’
button to move on to the next question. With 50 Questions to answer it meant that Users had
to press the button 50 times to complete the questionnaire, an unnecessary extra step and a
sign of poor user design.
During the Message Board Mining the reviews supported my findings, with some users not
even realising that the My Skills Profile Limited App was actually working because their choice
didn’t light up. So, they uninstalled it straight away and left a 1 Star review damaging the Apps
credibility with other potential users.
During the Competitor Benchmarking the main issue for both Apps came down the Design and
use of Colour. Of the two Apps Pygmalion was closer to how a paired back design should be
to not inadvertently influence the user with colour Psychology, although it does still employ
colour for simple decoration. The My Skills Profile Limited App has bright colours, again for
decoration and an eye-catching design.
What both Apps failed to realise is that Colours elicit feelings, thoughts and even memories.
This isn’t good when you are asking Participants to do a Personality Test because it will
influence their state of mind and could very well undermine and/or alter the way the user would
normally answer the question.
When it came to designing my App, I would have to: Address the issue of being able to change
an answer if the user wanted; Give feedback to the user on their choice of answer; Make the
process as streamline and quick as possible to complete; And avoid unnecessary colour use
to not influence the user during the test.
The ideation phase began by synthesising the findings using an Affinity Diagram, before
doing a Customer Journey Map for the Users Goals, Behaviours, the Context, Mental Model
and Pain Points as they made their way through the Apps.
At this stage it became clear that the main issues were during the Test and later when looking
at the results. With this in mind I decided that the Graph shown to the user at the end would
be a Bar Graph, because it was something that people were familiar with and it quickly
showed what traits were more prevalent than others.
To address the problem of streamlining the process, I did a Flow Diagram that cut to the chase.
The landing page was also the instruction page, the questions are all on one cascading page,
the answers could be changed, and the results were on the last page.
When it came to building the Low-Fi Prototype I decided to use Adobe XD. Based on my
Research I had to make the colour scheme as minimal as possible, so as not to subtly influence
the choices being made. Visibility of System Status was also essential, so the user knew which
choice had been made.
To address this, I paired back the colour as much as possible during the Test Section of my
redesign. I introduced a Likert Scale and wrote the questions in the first person so the reader
would immediately identify with them.
Because the project only had a limited scope, I wanted to create a Low- Fidelity Prototype to
test the full navigation of the process a user would go through as if they were completing the
form for real. For this I had basic interactive functionality, such as Buttons, and what happened
when a choice was made on the Likert Scale.
The last phase was a Usability Test on my Low-Fidelity Prototype proof of concept, followed
by a Depth Interview afterwards. The feedback given by the Participant was that they could
smoothly transition through the App. There was no confusion about what choice had been
made or any issues with amending a choice if needed. For such a long test it was as succinct
as it could possibly be.
Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash