Usability Report
·
TCOM - 4120
·
2025
ACSM
An Atlanta based eCommerce grocery store for African and Caribbean products.
Executive Summary
Conducted a moderated usability study of the African Caribbean Seafood Market mobile website to identify friction points in product discovery, navigation, and task completion. Working alongside a team of four researchers, we evaluated real user behavior and translated findings into actionable usability recommendations.
Roles:
Research, Heuristic Evaluations,
Facilitator,
Usability Testing
Timeline:
Aug 2024 - Apr 2025
Tools:
Figma, Word, Teams, Zoom, Sheets, SUS, SEQ
Team:
Oscar Ding, Daniel Osagie, Emeka Onyioha, Charles Madu
Key Findings
Features
Most features worked as expected but on mobile, new unseen errors occured
Broken Compared Feature
Lack of Search Suggestions
Adding to Cart, Checkout, Search, Accounts Worked As Expected
Design & Info Architecture
Most features worked as expected but on mobile, new unseen errors occured
Lack of quick links (return)
Search button location
Finding Products Was Easy
Features
Most features worked as expected but on mobile, new unseen errors occured
Lacking Titles (size/weight)
Cutoff Descriptions
Missing Product Photos
Key Recomendations
01 Streamline the Return Request Flow
Use clear, action-oriented labels like “Start a Return.”
Introduce step-by-step guidance or a progress bar.
02 Redesign Product Comparison
Use visual icons or tooltips to explain features.
Group comparable items more clearly.
03 Enhance Navigation
Make category labels more intuitive and user-centric.
Redesign IA to include common tasks (Submit Return/Check Order)
04 Conduct Follow-Up Testing
After updates, re-test with the same or similar users to gauge impact.
Project Overview
The ACSM website offers hundreds of specialty grocery products, but the mobile shopping experience created unnecessary friction.
Our goal was to determine:
How easily users could locate products
Whether users could complete common shopping tasks
Where users became confused or abandoned tasks
Which usability issues had the greatest impact
Why ASCM?
Since it’s launch last year they haven’t taken the time to reconsider it’s initial decisions for their current audience now.
By conducting a usability test, we can enhance the user experience and therefore improve user-to-product interaction with our targeted audience.
70% mobile
25% Desktop
5% Tablet
Responsibilities
Conducted heuristic evaluations
Create user personas
Facilitated usability testing sessions
Recorded observations and synthesized findings
Organized research documentation
Created presentation visuals
Presented findings to stakeholders
Research Goals
Efficiency 🎯
Understand how effectively and efficiently users can access and process information on the mobile website
Navigation 🛒
We want to understand how easily/quickly users can find their required product
Mobile Drop-Off 📈
Analyze the mobile shopping experience to identify drop-off points.
Usability Tasks
T1 Find and Purchase a Specific Ingredient Using the Search Bar
A Searching for Tetmosol Medicated Soap
T2 Set Up and Complete a Return Request
A Requesting a Return for an Incorrect Order
T3 Locate and Compare Products in a Category
A Finding and Comparing Soap Products
T4 Find and Purchase a Specific Ingredient Using the Category Menu
A Browsing by Categories to Find Dettol 250ml
Heuristic Evaluation
We chose Nielsen’s 10 heuristics as our evaluation tool for our analysis due to its strong relevance to mobile usability and its effectiveness in identifying potential issues that can hinder user experience.
The key reasons are the Relevance to Mobile Usability, Focus on Recognition Rather than Recall, Intuitive Product Understanding, Emphasis on Aesthetic and Minimalist Design, Error Prevention in Checkout Processes, and System Status Visibility.
While there are various heuristic evaluation tools, such as Shneiderman’s principles, Nielsen’s heuristics provide a broader applicability to mobile environments. Shneiderman’s focus on desktop applications often centers around user control and feedback, which, while important, does not fully address the unique challenges of mobile usability.
Reflection
My experience while conducting this usability study was overall positive. Being able to take the knowledge that I was taught in class and apply it to a real-world project was very eye-opening. I was able to take something from every week throughout the semester and actually apply it to this final usability test. From creating a guided informed consent document to learning about SUS scores and how to calculate them, every week was a lesson necessary for this final project. I believe a class formatted like this is a perfect way to learn and I had a lot of fun along the way.
One thing that stood out to me while conducting this usability test was the sheer number of errors that people had that were not clearly obvious to me. I realized during one of the interviews that something that's clearly obvious for me might not be obvious to another person. This really made me think about how customized experiences really can be and this is the entire point of becoming a UX/UI designer. The paths that I took in life are completely different from other people and being a great UX/UI designer means being able to create thoughtful designs that resonate with a wide range of different people. Another aspect of this usability test that I found interesting was taking the data we took from our participants and understanding what it meant for our mobile app. Being able to conclude certain negative components of the app by taking a census of our data proved to be helpful in our overall analysis. Using the SUS and SEQ data to give our app an overall grade showed me how much total improvement was needed for the app to bump it up from a below benchmark grade to an average benchmark grade.
In conclusion, the experience I had while conducting this usability test was positive, not only because it reinforced what I had learned throughout the semester, but also because it gave me a deeper appreciation for the importance of user-centered design.