The settings option is highly overwhelming, so I looked up online and discovered I was not alone. That is why I chose it for a usability test. This usability test consists of the Blink Test, the Expectancy Test, and several tasks.
Furthermore, the participant is Sydney Anuyah, a student at SOIC, IUPUI, pursuing a master’s degree, and he uses Gmail almost daily.I have decided to conduct the study at home in a studying environment as a Contextual Inquiry.
Figure 1: Sydney performing the tasks in Gmail settings.
The Gmail Settings issues are that it is all over the place. The information is poorly organized and thus very difficult to navigate, making it less intuitive. It seems confusing to tech-savvy persons, let alone older adults and people with various impairments.
While trying to configure the setting mentioned above, I spent a considerable amount of time looking up online tutorials, blogs, etc. Gmail has over a billion daily active users, which are very much diversified; such a service should not be this hard to navigate.
Figure 2: Gmail Settings.
As mentioned previously, it is a Contextual Inquiry. Here I, as the facilitator, am going to ask the participants questions and ask them to perform predefined tasks. At the same time, I will observe the participant's reactions, emotions, and mouse cursor movement and take notes.
Gmail is widely used, so finding a real user is not difficult. I have deliberately chosen an educated and tech-savvy participant to fathom the usability for people who are not very knowledgeable and tech-savvy. In the meantime, Contextual Inquiry seemed the way to go because the issues are with navigation and Information Architecture, so observing and including moderated tasks is vital. Also, I am conducting usability testing for only one participant, thus having the time and other resources.
This usability test is measured in 4 UX metrics, such as—
Time to success.
Error rate.
Completion rate.
Satisfaction level. Four levels: 1-4
Questions:
Kindly find the setting of Gmail. (From the home page) Response: The participant finds the gear icon within a few seconds. Point to be noted that later in the test, the participant confused the setting and support icons.
Another point is that the participant could not discover “See all settings” the first time. It took him some time to find out that it offered more settings. Time taken: 5-6 seconds. Error: 1
Blink Test: The participant was given 5-6 seconds to look at the setting panel.
What do you remember the most? Response: The main setting panel was very overwhelming for the participant. He could not remember anything. Instead, he was talking about the initial quick settings.
What stood out to you in the setting panel? Response: The participant was lost; he could not remember anything. However, he was clicking on the top panel. Only that seemed interactable to him; other than this, the information below was too much to take for such a short time.
Expectancy Test: Gave the participants 15 more seconds to look at and interact with the settings.
What do you expect here to happen? Response: “Well, I can do configurations, turn on and off many things.”
Can you name any or guess what those do? Response: “Nope, I have to read all the texts.” It means the participant could not process all the information shown to him.
What do you expect to be clicked on? Response: “There are a lot of buttons(radio buttons).”
(Task) Can you kindly change the language? Response: It took the participant to find the language settings 6-8 seconds. Then extra 4-5 seconds to find the “Save Changes” button to save the changed settings.
It was pretty straightforward for him; he did not confuse or hesitant about other things. Completion rate: 100% Satisfaction: 4
(Task) Kindly turn on/off the grammar and spelling checking. Response: After searching for a few seconds, he could not find the setting; interestingly, he searched in Support>Help and found the guidance for changing the settings. Time took: About a minute. Satisfaction: 1
Figure 3 Support > Help
Can you set the inbox preference, so unread messages appear on top? Response: “Yeah, I can do that with confidence” “It should be in the “Inbox.”After going into the inbox settings, he selected “Important first” instead of “unread” and saved it.It was perhaps because I was over-explaining the task to him, which created a bias. Time took: 30-35 seconds. Satisfaction: 4 Error: 1
Change the password. Response: “I should be on the first page (General).” So he clicked on general and did not find it. Then he said, “ then it must be in “accounts and imports.”And then he proceeded to change the password Time took: 25 sec. Error: 1 Satisfaction: 2
Add an email forward. Response: After clicking on the top panels a few times, he found the “Forward and POP/IMAP.” So it seems like the UX writing is also a bit confusing; it should be straightforward with iconography so that users can navigate more intuitively, skimming and looking at icons just like the participant found the setting gear icon. Time: 15-20 sec. Error: 3
For instance, you are on vacation, or it is a weekend, and you want to set auto email reply for whoever tries to reach you. Response: The participant gives up and directly searches “Help” for the option. He assumed he would not get it right or find the option. Thus he directly went on searching for the setting.
Interestingly, he found an option to set auto replies for vacation. However, it does not allow him to set auto replies for weekends or “on repeat” occasions.
There is a way to set that using templates. Unfortunately, there is no official documentation for it; thus, the participant could not find it.
So here, the weekend/out-of-office auto-reply could be implemented using the “on repeat” option like in Outlook calendar events. Time: 40-45s
For instance, you are on vacation, or it is a weekend, and you want to set auto email reply for whoever tries to reach you. Response: The participant gives up and directly searches “Help” for the option. He assumed he would not get it right or find the option. Thus he directly went on searching for the setting.
Interestingly, he found an option to set auto replies for vacation. However, it does not allow him to set auto replies for weekends or “on repeat” occasions.
There is a way to set that using templates. Unfortunately, there is no official documentation for it; thus, the participant could not find it.
So here, the weekend/out-of-office auto-reply could be implemented using the “on repeat” option like in Outlook calendar events. Time: 40-45s
Thank for reading! 🙌🏽
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