Reddit Usability Test
They might be the one of the best, but it could be better--a comprehensive usability test with the Reddit mobile app.
Project Overview
- 1. Heuristic evaluation 2. Competitive analysis 3. Usability testing 4. Final report 5. What I learned from this experience 6. Supplemental materials
Prefer a presentation style? Click Final report
Challenge
We know that Reddit is one of the largest and most active social media platforms, where users connect with communities that share their interests and engage in discussions. However, my team and I realized that the Reddit mobile app has some unconventional features and behaviors that impact its usability in our everyday use.
Goal
To address these issues, we conducted a comprehensive usability test with the Reddit mobile app. Our research process included a heuristic evaluation, competitive analysis, and user interviews. We aimed to identify the app's usability issues and gather insights from users to improve their experience.
UX Research Process
1. Heurtistic evaluation
Referring to Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics, we
conducted a thorough evaluation of the Reddit mobile app. We
identified 27 usability issues, and utilize
Jakob Nielsen's severity rating scale to rate each one of
them. We finalized 5 criteiria that might impact the usability
the most, including
- Consisitency and standards
- Aesthetics
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- User control and freedom
- Help and documentation
After collecting all the information, we found that many usability issues violated multiple heuristics. While some may appear to be low severity, certain features were unnecessarily complex, which could unintentionally overwhelm users over time.
2. Competitive analysis
By comparing Reddit to other popular platforms with similar
features, we identified both unique features Reddit offers and
potential additions it could adopt. Our analysis included three
direct competitors—Quora, Stack Exchange, and X (Twitter)—as well as three indirect competitors—Discord, Tumblr, and TikTok. After the comparison, we gathered some takeaways, highlighting
features Reddit could integrate and common usability issues from
other platforms/apps to avoid.
Overall, we conclude that Reddit app stands out as a leading community-driven
platform, catering to a diverse audience across various interests. However, its user interface and user flows presents usability challenges
that could further enhance the user experience. Another key finding for
us is that there is room for growth in content management and user engagement
strategies.
3. Usability testing
3.1 Screener
We first need to figure out who we can recruit for this project, We come together to figure out the criteria for the participants that could help us with the usablity result the most. For the limited amount of time and resources, we decided to focus on users between 18-35 years old, since this is the majority of the user group. We are splitting them into to groups--users who have used Reddit for at least 6 months, and users who have never used Reddit before but know what it is. In this way, we can compare how experienced user and inexperienced user interact with the app differently, and we can gether those essential information to pinpoint some of the higher-severity usability issues.
Screener script
3.2 Interviews
We created 6 tasks, and tested out the app with 5 participants, and each session lasted about 45 minutes. During each session, I played the role of note taker and observer, while my teammate was the facilitator. We recorded the session and took notes to capture the participants' thoughts and behaviors. After each session, we debriefed to discuss our observations and insights. We also asked participants to fill out the SUS (System Usability Scale) questionnaire to gather quantitative data on their experience with the app at the end, which to gain an overview of the usability issues.
Interview notes and affinity diagram
4. Final Report
To unwrap all of this, I first calculated average score of the
SUS, which is 74--not bad, but not great either.
For the insights, we found out that even though the app is usable and
most participants will be able to complete the tasks eventually, there
are small hiccups that bother them, and maninly in those 4 areas:
1 Reddit makes itself usable for browsing for all, but not as much for creating for all
Participants knows how to search for content, whether from Google or within the app itself, but they struggles to use the Reddit-specific features like awarding badges, and creating communities. They believe that the platform or the app is for "more skilled users".
2 Overwhelming design structure for content heavy platform-- takes time to find the right info
searching for content is more complicated than other platforms, and everything is showing up all at once is overwhelming; The content is not well organized and it often taks too many clicks to get to the right place. Plus, showing that many of selections for community topics is not helpful.
3 Platform-wide terminology/design systems aren’t clear, or universal in their meaning = various rounds of trial and error
Sorting terminology is not universal, what is the difference between reply and join a conversation; and who can help me understand "upvote" and "awards"?
4 Various functions that are hard to identify and fail to signify their affordances
Some functions are not clear, such as collapsing and expanding comments; adding the moderator rules are just breaking the whole flow of creating the commnuity; and error messages are never clear to the participants.
Final report
5. What I learned from this experience
1, our hypothesis can be very inaccurate.
What I predicted for some of the tasks were much worse, but users were able to learn it much faster than we thought, and some of them might not experience that issue at all.
2, pilot testing is essential.
We did our pilot testing before we started the actual testing, and even so, we still found out that there are so many little issues that could go wrong, resulting in breaking the flow of testing.
3, 5 participants can uncover a lot of usability issues, but more is better.
We were able to find out a lot of usability issues with only 5 participants, and during each session, the unwanted behavior of the app also provided us a lot more insights than we expected, but we also believe that more participants could help us find more usability issues.
6. Supplemental Materials
Heuristic evaluation Competitive analysis Screener Post-Test questions Usability testing plan Usability testing affinity diagram
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