Candid Comments

Rethinking the process of submitting online reviews so it's quick, fun, and rewarding

Where did this ~awesome~ idea come from?

Candid Comments was created as the final project for my User Experience Design and Usability course, and we were tasked to come up with a digital problem or challenge that needs to be solved.  I chose to think about the UX of reviews since they are definitely something that I use to decide whether or not I should make a purchase or where to grab a bite to eat.  On the flip-side, I rarely leave reviews 😅 since I feel like they're tedious, although I know that my comments would help someone else...
​ROLE
UX Designer & Researcher​
SKILLS
Persona Creation
Prototyping
Survey Creation
Qualitative Analysis
Quantitative Analysis
Usability Testing (Think-Aloud)
Wireframing
TOOLS
Adobe XD
Microsoft Excel
UserTesting.com

What makes this app idea special

Rewards for Reviews
Some sites and apps will offer rewards for users if they leave reviews, but are specific to that product or service, whereas the Candid Comments app would allow users to earn rewards for any product or service.

Quick "Mad Libs" Style Review Template
Once users indicate what items/services were purchased, a general template is created where users can simply choose the adjectives that they feel best represent their experience.  This will also present a more descriptive review since there are usually many aspects to review (customer service, time, quality, etc.).

"Smart" Stars
The star rating will be calculated using the adjectives selected by the user.  Those adjectives are assigned a value on the backend and used to come up with the star rating for the review, rather than another subjective rating with a review that may not fully convey the reasoning behind the review.

The Challenge

Reviews are a two-sided coin:
  • You want to read reviews to make an informed decision, but it seems like the only people who leave reviews are people who really love or really hate the product/service
  • You have no incentive or reason to leave a review once you have received the product or service
How might we capture the voice of those customers who don't bother leaving reviews and how do we make reviews less subjective and more constructive?

Project Goals

Since this was a class project that was not implemented, the project goal was based on the user testing question "How likely are you to recommend this app to a friend or colleague?", where users would select a number between 1 and 10, where 1="Not at all likely" and 10="Extremely Likely"

Initial Research

I started out with an Audience Analysis to focus on who would be my target users.  Where do people read or leave reviews?  Who is most likely to read or leave reviews?

With these questions in mind, I was able to build my three personas:
  • Foodie Francie:  Reads and writes reviews about restaurants in the areas where she travels
  • Supermom Sybil:  Reads reviews to ensure that she's getting safe products for her baby
  • Gamer Grayson:  Reads reviews to see if new gaming products are worth the hype

Creating Wireframes

The wireframes were very helpful in thinking about the progression of how the user would go through the process of leaving a review in order to earn rewards.  It was also helpful since we could think about what else the user could do within the same frame like they could start writing a review, or they can edit the reward they're working towards.

Thinking about how users would typically leave reviews, I tried to change up the process from thinking and writing to finding and clicking, so less brain power was used overall.

Style Guide

Colors and typography were chosen based on accessibility in terms of contrasting colors and san serif fonts for ease of readability.  I also wanted to choose bold colors, thinking about the ease of locating the app when scrolling on the phone as well as memorability and color associations.

User Testing

After making edits to the wireframe, a high fidelity prototype was created and we were able to test it with 3 participants using UserTesting.com.

TASKS:
  • Imagine that you wanted to change your gift card goals.  Please demonstrate how you would go about this process.
  • Imagine that you wanted to leave a review for a pair of gloves you bought from Amazon.  Which category would you choose (only pick one)?  Please explain why.
  • Imagine that you accidentally chose the wrong burger restaurant.  How would you make that edit?

POST-TASK QUESTIONNAIRE:
  • What frustrated you most about this app?
  • If you had a magic wand, how would you improve this app?
  • What did you like about the app?
  • How likely are you to recommend this app to a friend or colleague (1=Not at all likely, 10=Extremely Likely)

Feedback into Insights

Taking the answers and feedback from the participants, these are the results distilled from the qualitative analysis:
  • make the “current goal” more clear and clickable
  • add an edit button in the review template area instead of the search icon
  • add a search bar for businesses on the homepage
  • have an option for users to view their old reviews in case they want to edit/update them

Users also gave answers of 8, 8, and 10 for how likely they were to recommend the app to a friend or colleague!

Check out my other projects
NAVIGATING COVID
Guided navigation of COVID-19 resources considering the user's wellbeing
QR CODE RESEARCH
Discovering the barriers to scanning QR Codes through UX Research
© 2021 Teresa Phan