Spectators from across the globe benefit from mobile usability

With the 2010 Winter Games coming to Vancouver, Xomo utilized their understanding and knowledge of event schedules to develop a Winter Games Spectator Guide. The design challenge for this guide was unique due to the wide range of demographics that would be downloading and accessing the guide. The guide needed to be easy for people to use where ever they chose to access it, whether it be at home, or on a crowded bus where their attention may be diverted. Through our partner Wavefront, OpenRoad was contacted to utilize their mobile usability and design experience to improve the mobile experience of the Xomo iPhone Olympic Spectator Guide.

OpenRoad defined a usability testing methodology that evaluate the overall satisfaction and ease of use of the participants using the application. The task-base scenarios represented Key use cases were tested against with representative iPhone users, simulating the real-life usage scenarios of an Olympic Games attendee. The tasks centred around planning to see events, finding locations of venues, and deciding on how to add events (cultural and sporting) items to favourites.

During the evaluation, the participants indicated a high level of satisfaction with the concept and all felt that it was something that would improve their Winter Games experience. Although reported satisfaction levels were high, task success and ease of use scores fell below usability thresholds that were defined at the onset of the project. OpenRoad prioritized the findings based on the severity of usability problems and provided tangible design recommendations to the Xomo team. After the updates were made, OpenRoad reviewed the iterated application to ensure that all appropriate design changes were made and highest priority usability issues were addressed prior to the application being submitted to the Apple Application Store.

The result was the most downloaded 2010 Winter Games application with over 1 million downloads. The application received over 25,500 ratings, achieving an overall rating of 4.5 stars. Amongst the 300+ user comments, there were common themes of how easy the application was to use, how the application complimented their Games experience, and that users were hoping a similar application would be available for the London 2012 Summer Games.