Recently I shared with you guys how we’re getting scrappy with Remote Usability Testing on Mobile Devices. We’ve also been hanging out in coffee shops with our users and testing our mobile prowess in person.
We needed a way to record these sessions, and I got inspired by these guys. But I wanted to come up with a way to record in person mobile tests in a mac environment.
Once upon a time, our customer-base was primarily centered here in the United States and some of our design patterns reflect that. For example, our address forms use the term “zip code” and require a state. But these days, we’re noticing that our users are all over the world. In fact, it turns out that London now holds the title for the highest concentration of MailChimp users. That’s why we’re working on tweaking a few things in the app to be more international friendly, and we’re starting with our address forms.
Our recent redesign of the application has been a long time coming. We had to take our time because redesigning too quickly with hundreds of thousands of users would leave some folks behind. For that reason, we took 6 months to make slow, steady changes that improve the user experience and lay the ground work for some cool stuff to come.
I talked about doing a little mobile testing a few days ago, but that was just an exercise in learning how infuriating a non-mobile-optimized website can be. That wasn’t what I’d consider true “mobile app testing.” The phones were mounted on a fancy camera rig, and the environment was totally artificial (for better filming).
In reality, we use our devices at home, at the grocery store, while walking, while driving, and while brushing our teeth. We spend more intimate time with our phones than with our spouses. Seriously, we keep them right there in our pockets, next to “that place where the sun don’t shine.” They’re very personal, and therefore testing them has to be very contextual. Which is really hard (see: Designing the Mobile User Experience).
To test a mobile app, you have to get intimate with it for a while. A few of us have been living with Gmonkeys (our upcoming iPhone app) for the last few weeks, and I thought I’d post some observations.
It’s a really great time to be a web designer. HTML5 and CSS3 – the latest versions of the core technologies behind a majority of web pages – are finding greater support in contemporary browsers (Firefox, Safari, and Chrome to name a few). It’s now so much easier to design elegant interfaces that load faster, and that means a better user experience on web apps like MailChimp. Read More