UX Testing My Website

UX testing is an important part of the process of creating a User Interface Design as this gives an idea of how the end-user finds the interface and whether they enjoyed using it, whether it was useful and how satisfied they were with their experience.  I have created a feedback form on Google Forms that I would like to embed into my navigation bar so that I can UX test my website - this is the form I created

Feedback and UX Testing

I opened Google Forms and then added a title and created my first question, I clicked on the left hand drop down box and chose multiple choose questions.  I then added the choices I wanted.  I then duplicated the first question with the duplicate icon at the bottom of the page and then changed this for my second question I repeated this process until I had completed all the multiple choice question and then added two questions at the end which required a written answer. 

I then customised the form by going to the paint palette in the right hand corner and changed uploaded my own image and change the colour scheme. 

The form is now ready for use on my Wix Website - I wanted a form that would be on the website so that all users would be able to easily find this and test my website whilst on the website itself so I embedded the link into the navigation bar. 

I was pleased with how easily this worked and how it looked on the site and I managed to get 24 response in the first instance from this testing.  

Here is my feedback:

From this feedback I can see that although people mostly thought my homepage was 'good' only some thought it was excellent therefore I need to consider what changes I might make to improve this - I am hoping i will find further information on this in the comments section.

The majority did think the navigation was excellent so I was pleased with thsi result as I thought teh navigation worked well.

The majority thought the portfolio -gallery pages were excellent so again I was pleased with this result as this means the work I am showcasing works well in this presentation format.

Again with the Bio page the majority thought  it was 'good' rather than excellent so I do need to consider this page again and see what i can do to improve this.  

This split the user testers which did not surprise me as personal taste about the look of something is just that...

The majority tested on a desktop PC or Mac so I do think I need to further user testing just on mobile devices.

Some good comments here and some that are useful about the font choices, adding more galleries and some good feedback I will reconsider my website design and show the changes once I have thought of the best way to improve as per this feedback.

Testing my Gallery

For the app pages I was going to create a gallery on my website to showcase these and add a navigation link straight to the live app. 

So I started by adding another page to my navigation bar:

I then added a slide deck gallery through using the Add bar on the menu

I then removed all Wix images and added my own images from the app 

I am not sure whether I like this gallery yet or if it works as well as other features on my site so I am going to leave it to keep trying it but I may change this to a different presentation method here or just link the app the navigation bar.

Additional Features

I have now added some additional features on my app - I have updated the home page ...

As you can see I have added a Google+ link so I could create a community that goes with this app and also a social networking page which allows user to use this as a social network and discuss teh app and the photographers.  

So it will look something like this when people join and can add photos and videos and chat  and add comments.  I have also changed the background to this beige colour as this suited all the pages better - the black was too dark and the photographic did not work as the text was not clear.  The beige is throughout and I think that this consistency works well.

App Target Market

Who is my app for?  Why make this app and what use will it be? 

My app was designed with undergraduate students and anyone interested in photography. Undergraduate students particularly with the idea that they could search a category and find a starting point for further research.  In a very small snippet which is how people consume information using their phone. 

Statistica states that 178 billion apps were downloaded in 2017 and experts project close to 260 billion downloads in 2022. The revenue of the App Store and Google Play in 2016 was $2.23 billion.  Apps are a lucrative and growing market and with the right app that people really want to use there is certainly moaney to be made.  

Tapping into the right market and getting the app downloaded is the tricky part - the app needs to advertised and this could be through social media, through promotion on the right websites and through word of mouth and good reviews on the app stores themselves.  Getting the app featured and user tested with reviews online are all good ways to market the app.  

My app is free at the moment as the content is in development and there needs to be more work to make this a saleable prospect.

Continuing to Create my App

It has been a while since my last post but I am now back on track and starting to look at how my app will look on my website and how I will finalise my app.  It is difficult to see the listings on the mobile phone screen shots so I thought That I may use the ipad version of teh app for screenshots so that I can add these to my website:  So far they look like this:

This is from the Mapplethorpe listing - the whole idea of these is that they can be improved and added to - this project was just a simple development of the idea and this give an idea of how it will look for this project.

 This is the Stehi - as you can see the Mapplethorpe works better here with image and text and the text on teh Mapplethorpe is longer so I may change the Stehli images and add to the text before the final upload.

Biteable Practice Video

While testing out different software for classes and for different continuation routes I also made a quick Biteable Video

I went into the Biteable site and signed up for the free stuff only!  This does mean that it will contain the watermark and it cannot be downloaded however it can still be embedded and used as a link.  Biteable works on templates like wix so you can edit a template as much as you wish to create what you are after - please note as I was just practicing this and trying out this is not a high level piece of work - so no judgement please!  This is how I did this ..

Go to the Biteable site

Click on Create and choose what sort of animation, cartoon, video you would like to make - I chose an explainer video as this would work for what I intended...

I clicked into the link and chose a template as below..

The template I was using was an IT support ad but it had elements that I liked and wanted to use....I began changing some of the wods, the fonts and the colours - I also changed the audio and added a scene at the end - as this is a quick edit I would like to show you this in class.

you will see the purpose of the logo in my final edit...

I got the embed link to be able to link this anywhere - I could add to my website as I showed previously on my last post or I could show you as a link here...

Practice Video: De Montfort Uni

Creating a FlipBook: Yumpu

Here I will explain how I created a flipbook using Yumpu - the idea here is that I was testing this online software and how this could be used on my Wix website.

I chose a fairly simple book to create - a little book of light painting...

The first things I needed to do was create the pages fro this book on Photoshop.

I first created a title page - this was done through creating a new A3 canvas with a black background at 300dpi.  I then used Tragan Colour which is 3D gold lettering as I though it suited the light painting.

I then began creating the pages from archived images of light painting that I thought would come together well as a collection. 

I wrote an introduction using the same method as above with same typeface...

I then began adding images to pages so I created a new A3 Black canvas in landscape at 300 dpi for each page.  I then changed the original image size to fit the page.  I went into Image - Image Size. I then adjusted the image and made sure that it worked on the page and then added text where I felt was appropriate using the Text from the toolbar menu and adjusting the size of the font accordingly. 

Here is one of the pages as an example - I will not post all pages here as you will be able to see this as the full flipbook in my website.

I then select all the files I would like to create into a book and I convert these file to PDF format as this is what the Yumpu needs...

I used an online jpeg to pdf converter to achieve this 

After converting these files I can then upload my files in pdf format to Yumpu which converted these into a flipbook. 

  I then went to the embed and used the embedded link on my website pages like this...

I went to menus and pages and instead of add page I went to the link icon.

I then added the embedded link from yumpu and then this created a new page with an embedded link on the menu - I changed the name of the page and then clicked on done.

I then could test this out by previewing the link and it took the user directly to my light painting flipbook. 

I like the idea of a flipbook for some projects as I think this would work well - in this case I had to create a story with the photographs so that there was a reasoning behind the images and this brought them together - again with more time and different images I would probably have made a more portfolio book of images which would I think be an improvement.

Major Project Plan: Photographers Compendium App

Please find here my Major Project Plan.

You will see that I will be updating this as I carry out the tasks each week. 

Check out this video by Masha Vasyukova of some of Hans Bellmer's work.  Hans Bellmer made these dolls and then photographed them, he enjoyed the moment between childhood and adult and he tried to capture this in his dolls....

Click on the link here to see the video: Hans Bellmer Dolls