Hindustan Times

UX audit | HT News App | Media

Conducted a comprehensive UX audit and user research to ensure optimal user experience, including competitive benchmarking, user flows, wireframing, and visual journeys for HT News App. I also designed the new Hindustan Times responsive website based on the users need analysis, live since December 2020.

Introduction

A UX audit is a process used to identify potential usability issues in the existing solution/product based on the heuristic principles & prior user research.

Objectives

1. To identify and uncover the root problems which hamper the experience of HT App users.

2. To improve the overall satisfaction of users while interacting with the HT App.

UX Audit findings would help us to built an app, in alignment with business goals.
It focuses upon:

Retention
We lose ~60% users after the first week. Understanding the right problems helps to build the right solution. This would bring down user churning.

Increased session time

Average session time was only 5min 30s for the running app. We can help users in increase the consumption and extend
the time spent on app by providing better visibility of features.

Increase in DAU and MAU

Existing DAU were 22k and MAU were 120K.

Methodology

Heuristic Evaluation

• Usability Principles
• How to Conduct
• Heuristic Issues

User Research (UCA)

• User Interviews
• User Insights
• Persona
• User Journey

Competitive Analysis

• Competitors
• Perceptual Mapping
• Testing Parameters
• Insights

Design

Proposal

Proposed user journey and wireframes

Heuristic Evaluation

What is Heuristic Evaluation?

According to renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen, “heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognised usability principles (the ‘heuristics’)”.

How to conduct it?

When conducting a heuristic evaluation, evaluators compare a predefined set of specific usability principles with a product, app or website interface while attempting to accomplish actual system tasks.

Heuristic issues in the current app

PRE-LOGIN HOME

Heuristic Violated

• User control & freedom
• Error prevention

Issues

• Not enough engaging info (related to news)
• Too much distraction because of multiple ads
• Discoverability & findability issues for specific news
• Inconsistent usage of colors for styling. Cyan color theme broken by other color use
• Rounded corners and straight corners mismatch among widgets and other items

Recommendations

• It is very important to bring user’s attention towards NEWS followed by reading the article. Not being able to find the sufficient news info can possibly disappoint the user.
• Reduce the cluttering
• Give a bit more freedom to search by keywords

QUICK READS

Heuristic Violated

Match between system & the real world

Issues

• User might be interested in knowing the age of the news/article, this would make user
decide to read it further or not
• ‘quickreads’ looks like some jargon maybe because of no space between quick & reads
• Inconsistent usage of capital case and lower case for headings
• User expects to goto home after tapping ‘Hindustan Times’ logo

Recommendations

• Use texts that are easily understood by the users
• If user is actively reading articles here, then header & sections could hide for a time being
giving more space for image & news
• Add link to home screen on logo

Heuristic Violated

• Consistency & Standard
• Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors

Issues

• Google & Facebook button don’t depict their purpose. Would be difficult for a novice user to
understand it.
• Facebook button looks more prominent than Google’s
• Hint text used in Email ID/ Password look like actual text
• One is ‘Email’ & another is ‘Enter your password’ both labels are inconsistent
• So many terms for similar actions on this screen (Sign Up, Signin, Create an account)
• Accommodating ‘Generate OTP’ & ‘Forgot Password’ are placed at same hierarchy level.
This might increase the cognitive load to the users.
• This has no 'Back button' to take user back to previous page (android journey)

Recommendations

• Follow same & standard labels
• Explain the purpose of this screen clearly & show the options clearly. It’s just about signin &
signup.

STORY PAGE

Heuristic Violated

• Aesthetics & Minimalism(Gestalt’s properties)
• Navigation

Issues

• Share button on top and before image is redundant
• Advertisements have no distinction with story without margin
• Margins between paragraphs, advertisement and listings
don't follow margins to given enough distinction
• User expects to go back to previous story after tapping of
back button if user were reading another story before

Recommendations

• Remove one share button
• Search should be adapted on homepage

Note : Only a few key screens are shown here. However, the detailed analysis of all screens was conducted & taken into the consideration.

Takeaways from design audit

• Major violations in Aesthetics and Minimalism which has to be solved
• Layout and elements within has to be standardised
• Need to modify the navigation

User Research

User analysis interviews
Sample size : 24
Age group : 20 - 45
Professionals | Entrepreneurs | Students | UPSC Aspirant

Interviews were done among mixed group of men and women, married and unmarried from Tier 1 and 2 cities.
Commonly used mediums were, Inshorts, Google News, Hindu and TOI.

Users' Voice

User Persona

User Patterns

Pattern 1

Pattern 2

Experience Pitfalls

Problem finding processes to uncover the gaps between user expectations and current app.

Competitive Analysis

Perceptual Mapping

Benchmarking Parameters

Takeaways from competitive research

Re-design

Explored what could be done to alleviate the problems found in the exercise and how it might be solved using design. Revised app interface was proposed which would facilitate a better user experience.

ONBOARDING