Client: Untitled Group.

Venture Cap Product Investment.

shouta.co - the personal app (Send instant, digital nano-gifts™ like coffee, drinks and more. Shouts are easy to send, and even easier to spend.) shouta.co/biz - the business app (Thank a colleague, congratulate a business partner, reward your employees or incentivize a team with instant treats they'll actually want.)

Quote - The premise of Shouta... ""Between bouquets and fruit baskets, it was impossible to show we were thinking of someone without it being expensive, extremely slow or just sort of, well, extra. When people say "You shouldn't have," they might actually mean it.

That's why we created Shouta™: an App that brings gifting up to speed and down to scale. With digital tech and customizable nano-gifts™, you don't have to break the bank to make someone's day, or even leave the couch. Shouta™ gifts can be sent and received in seconds."" - unquote
Download the Shouta.co app from the Apple store or Google play

The Team at Untitled Group engaged me to do a accessibility and usability audit on a app they seed funded. I delivered problem and solution space research. Problem space is useful as a zoom out activity, to understand a person's overall situation. From the problem space I created a experience maps and a task analysis. I conducted solution research on the *existing* user journeys and created a concept map from the problem & solution space research insights.

Design an alternative way for users to remind their Shoutees to sign up and redeem their shouts. The enhancement must be MVP. Summary The app will send the Shouta (the user), an email and a reminder notification within the app to prompt the user to re-gift their shout.

The user doesn't want to re-gift their Shout. This function in the experience is failing there's two problems and they're related. Firstly the receiver gets an SMS but thinks it's a scam. The person who shouts the nano gift (the Shouta), has no way of reassuring the receiver (the Shoutee) within the app that the SMS containing a CTA to the Shouta app they received isn't from a Nigerian prince who will garnish their bank account and steal their identity if they click on the link embedded in the SMS.

It's important to highlight here that scam SMS's contain spelling mistakes; this is to bypass spam filters.

Overall impression:

1. Users love it; overall their reaction was delight
2. Easy to use the integration with apple pay and google play is seamless
3. The nano gifts are on point and relevant
4. They love the message function
5. They love the look and feel but overwhelmingly they appreciate the simplicity of signing up, creating the Shouta Mastercard and the Shouters Shoutees functionality  

The pain points:

1. 10 out of the 15 wanted the ability to be able to sign up with google, apple id, Facebook. Here is one users feedback: "Yeah, I think anything apps these days need to be able to integrate with anything already on your phone and not rely on multiscreen tasks" - this participant was on an android handset.

2. 14 out of the 15 Shoutees thought the sms was a clickbait / phishing scam; mainly due to the prevalence of multiple text scams circulating around atm. One of my participants had this to say "Lol I thought its hoax"

3. "she is on an iphone. Another iphone user had this to say "Yes didn't know if it was a scam. Sorry"

4. 50% of the Shouters wanted the ability to send someone a shout via Facebook messenger. Shouts can only be sent to Australian numbers at present. And the app is disabled when you attempt to enter a manual contact with a non-Australian mobile number… so enabling this function may prove problematic. This feedback is useful but out of scope for now. The team have put this in the backlog for a future release once the product has been rolled out to other countries. from what I've read up on the EML API documentation It's not impossible. https://www.emlpayments.com/company/ as EML are a globally recognized and used payment solution provider.

5. The gradient background tested against one participant who is colour blind and dyslexic was interesting the purple to pink gradient was green and grey for him. He had a few issues with text and appreciated the icons on the Shout page because he's dyslexic

6. A user I regularly engage to test digital products on is legally blind; she gets around okay but has to hold her phone so close to her face and squint to read and couldn't find her way out of the Shouting a treat journey - the back arrow in the top left hand side is acceptable where it is but I could see she expected a back or cancel button to the left of the Next button. she had trouble reading one of the sign-up pages within the flow. The text was too small and black on purple scores low in contrast - she made it through and completed the two factor with ease. On the whole her feedback was positive.

7. 3 out of 15 participants wanted to enter a manual amount because they were experiencing situational accessibility issues - using one hand. The ability to manually enter an amount would be a nice addition it would make the task more accessible.

8. My Feedback on the Feed page: I haven't tested this with end users as yet because I don't need to. I know this part of the task flow is failing. Here's a summary of the current flow and how its not meeting the users needs... When the user goes to the Feed page they are shown a list of users (Shoutees) who haven't used their shouts they're highlighted with a cheeky swinging ball & chain and a bit of copy “Time to remind Paul to download Shouta to spend your shout” the action to remind Paul is missing. Clicking on the icon pencil icon infers I'll be able to edit the shout instead it takes the user to a modal screen with the animated ball and chain… there is no way to remind Paul or ping Paul. Changing the Shoutee is the only function available. I want to resend my shout to Paul. I tried to work around it by clicking on the Change Shoutee button and reentering his mobile number but this just triggers an error that states the following “”Your Shout is already going to that person. Try messaging them directly to see if they received it.”” One of the Shoutees whose not tech savvy couldn't find the Shouta SMS they may have deleted it because they thought it was a hoax - it would be nice to resend my shout to this particular Shoutee - for a none technical person they will assume that Shout has disappeared into the ether. Gone for good. They won't know that loading the Shouta MasterCard into their apple wallet or Google play will credit their account. To assume they will go out of their way to read through the FAQ is also an oversight.

9. I had a few edge case technical questions around potential security risks. The Shouta website has details on how they mitigate fraudulent activity occurring on a Shouters account via a suspension task. However this doesn't mitigate the potential for scammers to SMS you using SMS spoofing… this problem is beyond the scope of this design enhancement. Once this edge case becomes common place one of my solutions would be this. Add a verification code to the Shout SMS.

10. API transaction layer provided by EML Data service is excellent. No one wants to have to manage payment PCI compliance.

11. Empty state is empty - the most overlooked - empty state experience and how to pivot empty to opportunity.