'Fi' - GPS Powered Dog Tracking App

Usability critique and evaluation for an existing app

'Fi' is a smart dog collar that is designed to help one keep track of their dog's location and activity. Fi' has a smartphone app designed as a visual tool to supplement the GPS collar for tracking locations and monitoring health data of dogs.

Features

User Personas

Storyboards

Usability testing for the app

Plan

Participants

Task Design

HTA - Hierarchical Task Analysis

1. Tracking: View the current location of the dog and the places where has the dog been to in a week; turn on the lost dog mode

2. Socializing: Post one photo of the dog, add words describing feelings, comment on others’ posts

3. Ranking: Find out the rank of the dog today and a friend’s dog ranking today

4. Menu: give authority(owner or walker) to other users, find edit profile icon, connect to instagram

5. Health: find the activity and sleep data, locate strain score icon (time for rest)

The participants were asked to perform the following tasks -

Task 1: Tracking

1.1 Track the current location of the dog

1.2 View walk routes history

1.3 Turn on lost dog mode

1.4 Walk streak

Task 2: Socializing

2.1 Post photo of your dog

2.2 Like/comment on other people's posts

2.3 Like post/walk from following friends

2.4 Discover new posts

Task 3: Ranking

3.1 Find ranking of the day

3.2 Find ranking of a friend's dog

Task 4: Menu

4.1 Give authority(owner or walker) to others

4.2 Find edit profile icon

4.3 Connect to instagram

Task 5: Health

5.1 Find the activity

5.2 Find the sleep data

5.3 Locate strain score icon

Results of task based testing:

Summary based on users' feedback

Undesirable Designs

Live Screen

Discover Screen

Rank Screen

Activity and Sleep Screen

Profile

Since 'Tracking' and 'Health' are the features with utmost importance and are the key features, further study has been done only on these features.

Looking into 3 tasks mentioned above -

This section has newly proposed HTAs, conceptual design ideas to make the existing designs better and new interface designs.

Task 1: Current location, walk route history

New Hierarchical Task Analysis:

Conceptual Design for the new HTA:

Newly proposed user interface design:

Task 2: Lost dog mode

New Hierarchical Task Analysis:

Conceptual Design for the new HTA:

Newly proposed user interface:

Task 3: Activities

New Hierarchical Task Analysis:

Conceptual Design for the new HTA:

Newly proposed user interface:

The new interactive prototypes were developed with the help of Figma and were tested with users.

Design System:

Usability Testing

Testing Method - Think aloud testing

No.of Participants - 9

Study design - Mixed subjects

The old version was tested with first and new version was tested next for half of the group and vice-versa for the next half of the group.

Main tasks:

1.Tracking for location

2.‘Find’ my dog

3.Find and view Activity data

Tools used:

Useberry - Advanced user testing tool

Zoom - recording / transcription

Think aloud testing:

Location tracking:

1.Could you locate where the dog is at currently?

2.Could you view the dog's walk route history?

3.Could you view the dog's walk route history for the 15th of Feb?

‘Find’ my dog

4. Imagine your dog escapes, how would you find it using 'Fi' app?

5. Continuing the previous scenario, how would you turn on collar light if your

dog is in the dark

6. Could you change the light color?

Activity

7. Could you show me how would you monitor the activity of the dog?

8. Could you show me the activity data of the dog for the 8th of March

9. Could you show me the activity data of the dog for the 8th of March on 11 am?

System Usability Scale (SUS) - Questionnaires

Participant Demographics:

Results:

Time of completion was not recorded as "Think aloud testing" was being conducted and it would increase the time taken to complete a task.

Ease of use - tradeoffs

Comparison of user flows:

System Usability Scale - Results

Comments from the users - New system:

"So user-friendly!"

"Easy to change collar light and select dates for longer period."

"The “health” icon is confusing, won’t expect to find activity and sleep data under 'health'"

"Extra unnecessary efforts to click outside the calendar to change to the right date"

"Calendar icon too small to click on"

Key concepts for improving the usability

Design enhancements post usability testing:

Product Manual