About Product x:

Product X is an iOS app that helps beauty consumers find hair products that will most likely work well for them. With the help of this expert system, consumers answer 4 questions via chat and are able to scan or search for hair products to receive personalized predictions (known as match scores) on their performance.

Background:

When I began doing work for Company X in August of 2018, the early-stage startup was working to launch its consumer-facing mobile app. A design agency had already created most of the UI design. After performing a high-level assessment of the screens and design prototype, there were a few places where the UX fell short (from a general perspective, without having spoken with potential users).

Immediately after coming on board full time in October 2018, I was responsible for working with the development team to salvage any major UX issues that could be tackled within a month before the app’s soft launch in November, in addition to leading the UX efforts for additional updates quickly after launch. This page will focus on my contributions prior to launch.

Objective:

Prior to the November launch, I was tasked with improving the design’s UX as much as possible without creating complex work for the development team. This required constant communication with both the development team and the Founder/CEO.

Because the launch date was pushed back several times before my arrival, launching took precedence over several of the UX needs (most required too much development effort for the time we had). I, instead, focused on QA and ensured that the app’s design was of acceptable quality and that any major bugs were found and fixed.

Within each of these categories, it was necessary for me to prioritize issues from least to most important because of our time constraint. In Asana, I communicated needed changes to the design to the development team, designating issues from most to least critical using the following system:

• P0 - most critical; applies to major bugs that greatly hinder user understanding and/or usability

• P1 - very critical; applies to other bugs or design flaws that hinder user understanding and/or usability

• P2 - moderately critical; applies to major spacing issues in the UI, copy edits, and design additions that help to increase user understanding and/or usability

• P3 - least critical; applies to minor color adjustments and other minor spacing issues in the UI

Launch:

We were able to successfully soft launch the Product X iOS mobile app on November 9, 2018 while the Founder/CEO and I were at the AfroTech conference in San Francisco, CA. At this conference, I began to gather user feedback on the app by executing guerrilla testing sessions.

Lessons Learned:

It was very apparent to me that QA testing is not an easy task. There were several edge cases that needed to be accounted for and I did not begin the testing with this in mind. Instead of dividing possible actions up by major functionality, I tested the app somewhat randomly which became apparent later in some of the user testing that occurred post launch.

Although it can be nearly impossible to account for every single edge case without input from actual users, these are a few steps that I will take going forward to help with performing more robust QA testing:

• List out major functions or features of the product

• For each function/feature, 

  • List out what users are expected to do

  • List out what users can do

• Consult with team on other possible edge cases

Next Steps:

Please view the Post-Launch project to learn more about the feedback gathered.