Recommendations for future work
As a result of user feedback during the testing process, as well as a reflective evaluation of the system following the completion of the development phase, a number of potential improvements to both the system and the project process have been highlighted.
Firstly, focusing on the project process itself, while the wireframes were useful to give a visual representation of the webapp, they were far too basic to be truly useful. In future, expanding the detail of these wireframes beyond their very basic representation would significantly improve their usefulness in gaining feedback early on and allowing users to gain a better understanding of the proposed layout and functionality.
Furthermore, recording the outcome of the testing process digitally (either using a platform like Microsoft Forms or simply entering them directly into a spreadsheet), instead of on paper would help to streamline the analysis process and entirely remove the time that was spent translating from paper to digital solutions for deeper analysis.
Moving onto improvements to My SportApp itself, the feedback from users as part of the SUS questionnaires has proved very valuable in determining the updates that should be made to the next iteration of My SportApp.
The majority of the feedback received from users was around minor tweaks that could be made to the user interface of My SportApp to either improve the ease of use, or prevent possibility for error. For example, users suggested that the navigation bar should always be visible to improve navigation efficiency and accessibility. Similarly, one user also suggested that if a top-level menu item is clicked, a new page with tiles representing each subpage should appear, instead of the existing implementation which is to launch the ‘most common’ page (typically, search for the current entity).
A common piece of feedback around the user experience relates to actions that require the user to be logged out (such as term replacement). Users feel that they should be presented with a prominent pop-up before logging them out to ensure user understanding and reduce confusion. Similarly, testing identified that some users were unaware that the system was currently processing their requests, so proceeded to click on buttons multiple times. To address this, a clear loading message should be displayed.
Finally, there were a small number of improvements that were identified as part of the internal testing of My SportApp. The primary improvement would be the introduction of more accessibility settings such as multiple colour schemes and font sizes to cater for a wider range of conditions. Continually, while Enhanced Security Mode provides a basic level of access control, a greater level of granularity in permissions would provide administrators with a higher level of control over their system, reducing the likelihood of intentional or accidental changes to data within the system.
To summarise, these recommendations offer valuable insights into both what could be done better in other projects, but also which updates should be prioritised for My SportApp to enhance the usability, functionality and overall user experience of the webapp and help it to continue to meet the evolving needs of its users.
Updates
Since the completion of the My SportApp project, the following updates have already been implemented to address user feedback or better meet the requirements of a sports management system:
- Implementation of a ‘sticky’ header (Gayhart, et al., 2014) that is always visible:
- Implementation of a loading indicator that prevents multiple form submissions/API calls:
- Navigation bar now has labels for all icons (only in Accessibility Mode):
