SHAKE
iOS Application
Shake is a peer-to-peer social betting app, enabling virtual handshakes on anything from a game of tennis with a friend, to the winner of a scrabble game. It lets users bet against each other as individuals rather than against a bookmaker of prescribed betting odds giving them more flexibility in what they can bet on using a cutting-edge, simple and intuitive mobile platform.
Challenge
I was asked to do a heuristic evaluation on the existing designs of the app before they start developing it. I received the prototype and all the other screens of the application which were not included in the prototype.
My Approach
I took the user journeys from the prototype and followed them screen by screen, working through the application. Since it was a pre-development review there was no real usage data to support my review.
However, users know their goals best and watching them making “mistakes” and having hard time understanding flows and the UI is invaluable. Also, user research can not only identify problems but also show how common those problems might be. So, to validate my findings I showed the designs to potential users.
User Research
I received a fairly well-built prototype that I could use for testing the application.
For recruiting users from the target audience I used the user base of their other similar product. So I could make sure that I am testing with potential users of the app.
All the participants were given the same set of tasks focusing on highly important areas like onboarding, the new bet creation flow or the dashboard.
Results
I wrote a detailed report that included:
- issues I found with user-flows, concepts and the UI.
- the reports and the recordings of the user sessions
- detailed (screen by screen) recommendations on how to fix both the UX and the UI problems
- and also, ideas for potential improvements