What is Figo Pet Insurance?
Figo is a pet insurance company located in Chicago; they have the mobile app where the pet parent can add a pet to their profile, submit claims, purchase a new policy, set reminders, etc.
The challenge
The business wanted to do a complete redesign of the application but without any data of how the application was performing.
In summer 2017 we decided to run a usability test session to learn what were the strengths and weaknesses of the application. We took the insights and results as a base for the redesign of the application.
Who is the user?
The main user is what we called "The Urban Female Pet Parent".
She is between 25 – 40 years old, she is an early adapter and influencer (without knowing it). She lives an active life (dining out, working out, hiking, walking/running with her pet). She makes money but is not materialistic.
She does not have children yet, her pet is her life. She tends to gravitate towards beautiful, well-designed, but not necessarily pricey things (modern household furnishings, unique art). In her goal to carve out her own life, she makes decisions on what feels right to her: many purchases are made with rationale plus emotion.
My role
My role was to work closely with the dev team in understand and evaluate the application. Also, negotiate with the business and the product owner on why we should run a usability test session.
Collaborate closely with the Scrum Master and a Design trainee who helped me to be the ghost guest by taking notes in the sessions.
Scope and constraints
The scope was to document, record and give a proposal of the purchase policy workflow to the business.
Also, some constraints I had was that I was the only one who planned and ran the usability test session, another thing was that we didn’t have professional equipment to record the sessions neither than a test room.
Running the usability test
Because this was the first time I would run a usability test session, I decided to do and write a One Page Plan based from the book "Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research by Tomer Sharon” where I put the background of the usability test, the goal, the research questions, the methodology and the participants we were looking for.
Then I configured an account in "youcanbook.me" and started recruiting users, I posted on facebook and friends did me a favor to share the post. Surprisingly the users responded, and I had 5 users booked the next day, and they fitted perfectly with the persona we were looking.
At ArkusNexus we didn't have any usability test room or professional equipment to record the sessions, so I used a regular meeting room for the test and, to record the sessions I asked my friend Humberto for his GoPro arm and I got two webcams, I used one focusing the phone and the second recording the users reactions. With the help of my water bottle, I did a hacky setup.
Part of the equipment used to record the tests.
Meeting room that we used to run the usability tests.
Setup of the equipment
Also, I wrote a consent form because I was going to record the users and I didn't want problems with the business, either the users. A day after, I negotiated with ArkusNexus to give coffee gift cards to the users after the test as a way to say thank you for their help and time.
Before running the test, I did a pre-test with one co-worker, this test pilot helped a lot because I identified a setup problem with the cameras and the microphone of the computer, also that I needed a "credit card" because the user will buy a policy for their pet.
We ran the tests on Wednesday and Thursday, I tried to involve the dev team in participating as a ghost guest and taking notes, the scrum master helped me in two sessions and, a designer (trainee) also helped me in a different one.
We were waiting for the 5th user, but it didn't attend. The designer told me that she had a friend that was the perfect fit for the test, she invited the user, and we ran the last usability test on Friday.
2 of the 5 users that tested the application.
Outcomes
I analyzed the results and some outcomes I found were:
- The time to purchase a quote exceeded the 10 min.
- There was some error scenarios where the user didn't know what the error was.
- The purchase form was too long and the user got lost.
- There were some fields in the purchase form that was not clear.
- Navigation problems with the application.
- The users loved the colors of the app.
- The users read the benefits of the policies and said that the information was clear and easy to understand.
Affinity diagram of the test results.
I did a document to present the results to the business and the PO. We had a call, and I talked about the different feedback we received.
We focused on the buy a quote task, the CEO mentioned that we found the reason why the user never buys a quote in the mobile app, we found this as a great initiative to improve and create growth for the business.
Lessons learned
After running the test I did a retrospective and see what went well and what I can improve for the next time, here are a couple things that I learned:
- I learned that the availability of the user is way different from what I expected. I am the one who needs to be open at any time for the tests.
- Put a sign outside of the room "Running a usability test, please be silent."
- Always invite another designer to take note about the test.
- NO CELL PHONES. Most of the users were distracted by notifications and calls.
- Mention the reward as an incentive to get the attention of the users.