Analyzing and redesigning digital focus groups
By: Amanda Nguyen
Tags: Usability Heuristics, Video Conferencing, Redesign, UX Design, Usability

#1. Aesthetic and minimalist design

“Interfaces should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in an interface competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.” – Jakob Nielsen

What my team was most frustrated by (and what led to more frustrating experiences) was the look and feel of the platform. While other platforms — like Zoom and Google Meet — use clean lines, simple iconography, and straightforward actions, InterVu’s dark colors, crowded sections, and outdated interface made us feel like the platform’s functions itself was outdated—which was not the case, but it certainly felt like that. This was shocking, considering the modern, clean, and fresh feel of their website and what site images suggest the product looks like.

Image provided on InterVu’s website, suggesting this is what the platform looks like

The actual InterVu platform in practice

According to the Aesthetic-Usability Effect, users tend to be more forgiving of usability mistakes when the interface is visually appealing. On the opposite side, this means that users tend to be less forgiving of mistakes when interfaces are not visually appealing. Because the look of the platform did not match industry standards nor the rest of their clean website, my team members and I did view the usability mistakes we faced with more criticism than we would have if we were using Zoom.

In addition, the features available (namely, Backroom reminder information, InterVu Live Marking Pod, and FOR-FV-TECH-ONLY.zip) are unnecessary for most users to have pulled up during the entirety of the interviews. This ends up crowding the space, resulting in small videos of participants and limited space for showing stimuli. Streamlining this section will not only provide more visual real estate, but will meet the usability heuristic by only containing information that is essential to the user.

Suggestions for improvement:

Use clean, simple designs and iconography

Declutter the platform by only providing essential information and features, while allowing for more specifics to be able to be toggled on/off as needed

Allow for video pop-out/minimization for more flexibility and customization of view

#2. Consistency and standards

“Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform and industry conventions.”

Top Navigation Bar within InterVu

Within InterVu, video and audio settings buttons are located in the top navigation bar, which feels logical to an extent—typically, when searching for something, users will look to the navigation bar.

Bottom Navigation Bar within Zoom

However, across most video conferencing platforms (including Zoom, Google Meet, Facebook Messenger, and Microsoft Teams), these buttons are found along the bottom of the video screens. It makes sense—if you want to adjust your video settings, you would first go to where your video lies. This mismatch in what users expect made it difficult for me to find these buttons, although I have used the platform before. If the technician did not call each participant ahead of time to help them walk through and set up the platform, it most likely would have taken them a longer time to find these, potentially resulting in a frustrated participant and/or a late interview start time.

Attendee List and Client Chat in InterVu

In addition to lack of consistency to industry standards, the platform itself has instances where wording is inconsistent, leaving users confused. In particular, the Attendee List and Client Chat uses different terms that are not intuitive. The words “hosts”, “presenters”, and “client” are used to differentiate different layers of authorization, but it is unclear what each means. Clients who are listening in on the interviews are categorized under “presenters” so that they have access to the backroom feature, but this term is misleading because they will not be presenting anything.

Suggestions for improvement:

Move video and audio settings from the top navigation bar to the bottom of the video section

Adopt updated icons that are more standard/universally understood as “audio” and “camera”

Utilize consistent words to categorize people listening in/participating in the interviews that are widely understood

#3. Visibility of system status

“The design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time.” — Jakob Nielsen

The client chat is a really helpful feature that allows you to send messages or questions back and forth without the participants seeing, something that we are unable to do on other platforms. However, the downside is that there is no communication of the state of the messages, namely that there is no way to know that there is a new unread message within the chat box. This puts strain on the moderator, who has to guide participants through questions while monitoring the chat in the chance that one of our clients sends a question, which could easily be missed. While there is a notification in the bottom corner of the screen when someone sends a message, the notification box looks too similarly to the rest of the platform, making it difficult to differentiate or notice.

How to improve:

On Mac, make the notification box appear at the top right to match other system notifications and in the same format to make sure it stands out

Add a “new message” indicator to the messages themselves to indicate when there is a new unread message

View Screen Bar located on the right side of the InterVu platform

#4. Error Prevention

“Good error messages are important, but the best designs carefully prevent problems from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions, or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.” – Jakob Nielsen

During our interviews, the moderator accidentally closed out the “view screen” bar, which is essential to change what screens the participants see (from “cameras only” to “cameras and stimuli”). While the Focus Vision technician is available to help change the screens, it is frustrating that there is no way to bring this bar back (at least, no way that any of us — including the technician — knew about).

Suggestions for improvement:

Rather than completely deleting an essential section, either ask for confirmation before deleting or change action to easily hide/unhide the section

#5. Recognition rather than recall

“Minimize the user’s memory load by making elements, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the interface to another. Information required to use the design (e.g. field labels or menu items) should be visible or easily retrievable when needed.” – Jakob Nielsen

Before each project begins, Focus Vision offers a dry run to help walk the team through the ins and outs of the platform and to set up various screens and stimuli. Because I had used the platform once previously and had a heavy workload, I did not want to participate in the dry run. However, I did end up joining because I remembered that the platform did not offer much help in helping users recall features and information. If there were other ways to recall information rather than remember it, I would have freed up time to complete other necessary tasks.

Additionally, for clients who had never used the platform or went through a dry-run of their own, it would be much more difficult to intuitively guess at what each feature does. While they could directly message the technician during the interview to ask for help, this would not be possible if they did not know how to reach the technician (or that there was a technician in the first place!).

While the dry run is a good solution to help users know how to use the platform, it does not take into account recurring users who just need a quick reminder, nor users who do not have the time to participate in a full and lengthy dry run.

Suggestions for improvement: