Fitting Easy
Fitting Easy is a mobile application for android devices whose main functionality is to help reserve accessibility fitting room for people on wheel chair. Additional features in the application include pre-ordering the clothes before getting to the store, checking the fit of the cloth by scanning the tag on the cloth through the smartphone application.
Methods
Survey, Semi-structured interviews,
Empathy study, Usability testing,
Task based analysis and Cognitive walkthrough
Responsibilities (UX Research)
Qualitative research & data analysis,
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Users
Our key users are adults across a wide range of ages who are not able to stand or walk, and who use wheelchairs in their daily lives. They are strong-willed, independent and go about doing their daily tasks, activities, and responsibilities.
Despite the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and accessibility services available at clothing stores, there are still many issues wheelchair users face when purchasing clothing in stores. Depending upon the kind of disability (paraplegic/quadriplegic), their issues can vary from being unable to try on the clothes in a regular fitting room to needing assistance to get dressed. They love to wear good looking clothes and may have preferred brands to buy clothes from. Though they could purchase clothes online, they like to visit physical stores to find clothing they enjoy, and often try it on before making a purchasing decision.
Understanding the Problem
Research Questions
What issues do the users face?
What do they do to encounter this issue?
What is their motivation to purchase clothes at physical outlets?
Research Goal
To understand the issues that occur while shopping for clothing in physical stores, how users respond and why.
Recruitment
Recruitment occurred in Atlanta. I distributed our screener survey online through forums, Facebook groups, Craigslist, and Reddit. I also recruited in-person with the help of Office of Disability Service and AMAC Research Centre, both at Georgia Tech.
Data Collection Methods
(Semi-Structured Interviews, Empathy Study, & Survey)
To understand about people with different disabilities, places they visited often, their shopping experiences, and the problems they encounter while shopping clothes at a physical stores, I created a 19 question survey. This survey was answered by 27 people. Further, to learn about the existing solutions, my team did a literature review.
I conducted semi-structured interviews with knowledgeable sources and experts within the field including 6 wheelchair users, an occupational therapist, and a research scientist who specialize in accessibility.
Because we were not able to observe our target users navigate through a physical store and question them during their shopping I, along with one team member, conducted an empathy study. With the empathy study, we did complete store visits and documented our observations with attention and focus on accessibility at two clothing stores in Atlanta. The findings of this empathy study resulted in a User journey map (see next section).
Identifying the Problem Areas
(Fitting Room, Reaching Items & Navigating within the store)
From our survey and interviews, we found people using wheelchairs facing several inconveniences while shopping for clothing in physical stores. These problem areas can be divided into three parts:
2. Brainstorming and Sketching
Sketches & Storyboards
3. Deciding the Solution
Survey
To finalize the solution, we sent a survey to accessibility experts and participants who we earlier interviewed or surveyed. In this survey, we described each of our ideas and included a storyboard to illustrate the ideas. This was followed by 2 sessions to analyze our responses.
Some of the events that we envisioned for the system are:
Reserving the fitting room
Entering the fitting room
Exiting the fitting room
Pre-ordering of clothes through app / ordering the clothes
4. Interactive Prototype
Final Storyboard
Interface Screens
Try the interactive prototype below.
5. Validation
Usability Evaluation
(Usability Benchmarking, System Usability Scale, and Cognitive Walkthrough)
Our higher-level goal was to test the following to derive the usability of our prototype - Ease of Use, Learnability, Satisfaction & Usefulness. This was done using measurement of both qualitative and quantitative metrics. We completed a total of 4 usability testing sessions. Typical tasks of the application were presented to the participants, and follow up questions were asked. An example task was given to the participants, to get accustomed to the format of the session, and once the participant was comfortable, other tasks were given.
As the participant performed their task, they were asked to think aloud, and once they completed a particular task, follow-up questions were asked. When the participants completed all of the tasks, any further questions were asked and the participants were asked to rate their opinion of the prototype through the questionnaire including SUS.
SUS Score Out of 100
Self Reported Metrics
Cognitive Walkthrough
We conducted 2 cognitive walkthrough sessions with usability experts. The experts were given the same tasks that were designed for the users.The usability experts were in agreement that entering measurements and reserving a fitting room, were easily navigated and understood by users. The task of adding clothing to the fitting room, experts felt was less clear. The button to scan barcodes is unfamiliar to users and therefore difficult and unintuitive. Further, the process of scanning clothing was difficult to understand. Once clothing was scanned for fit, one expert felt that the explanation of the fit would not be understood by users. The terms were not descriptive enough to fully explain to users the true fit of the clothing. For these reasons, both experts gave low scores for learnability of the system.
Criticism
Our app needs an instructional portion during onboarding to help novice users get familiar with our app.
In the body measurement portion, participants have concerns that some of the measurements are difficult to take by themselves, and they may still not know how to do it even after looking at the pictures provided
For scanning items, participants missed the function of our prototype that they can choose items online before visiting the store.
In the fitting room, users often have the need to change items and call for assistance, but our app is lacking these features.
Features that are good
Although there is still much room for improvement, we also found participants really enjoyed some features within the design. For example, the ability to view clothing fit on a virtual model can be really helpful if the result is accurate.
Also, participants felt the ability to extend fitting room reservation time was considerate for them since they usually take more time to try on due to the inconvenience of wheelchairs.
The barcode scanning gives users the ability to explore in store besides online shopping. It’s also convenient because they don’t need to carry clothes around.