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Skill Swap

Harsh Sharma - Competitive Analysis, Persona's & User Stories, Wireframes & Sketches, Prototypes, and HTML Implementation
Joshua Tapia - Competitive Analysis, Persona's & User Stories, and Wireframes & Sketches
Ian Liggett - Competitive Analysis, Persona's & User Stories, and Sketches

Executive Summary

Competitive analysis showed that while there is a fair amount of competition, most alternatives are either locked behind a paywall or have a poor user interface.
Heuristic evaluation revealed that a close competitor uses too much text, which can overwhelm users and discourage them from continuing.
Users preferred a more straightforward, direct, face-to-face experience.
All key information should be available immediately when a user clicks on a post.
Through personas and scenarios, we confirmed that users want a simple application with no extra steps or loops.
Sketches and diagrams indicated that we can keep the UI clean and minimal while removing unnecessary actions in both the MVP and the final product.

Executive Summary

Demo Q&A highlighted that users want a clearer way to organize posts, specifically through the addition of Tags. They expressed interest in having a set of predefined tags while still being able to create their own as needed. Users also suggested adding a way to indicate the difficulty of skills and the level of proficiency required for tasks.
The Cognitive Walkthrough showed that our current placement of the Next and Previous buttons created some confusion. Because these controls were positioned near the contact box rather than the post blocks they apply to, users had trouble understanding their purpose.
We also realized that confirmation messages were not emphasized enough in our design. Incorporating simple message boxes or alerts would help users better understand what actions were completed and how the system is responding.

Executive Summary

A formative usability study with undergraduate Usability Engineering students (n=6) showed that users were able to successfully complete all core tasks using the SkillSwap prototype.
Tasks related to finding posts and creating posts were generally rated as easy and satisfying, indicating that the primary user flow aligns well with user expectations.
Tasks involving post deletion were rated as more difficult, revealing that post management features are not sufficiently discoverable and would benefit from clearer labeling and navigation affordances.
Profile pages increased comfort for some participants, but others expressed a desire for stronger trust signals, such as average account ratings or clearer indicators of user credibility.
Participants noted that confirmation messages for actions such as creating or deleting posts were not obvious enough, suggesting a need for clearer system feedback.