iOS Application Review: Data Usage Monitor

Rate for 1-10

How useful was the information provided by the application regarding WiFi usage and what did you like/dislike?

Person 1: I liked it, the presentation was nice and the gauge, graph, lists, and all the info was awesome. But I don’t think that I would use this for Wifi.

            Person 2: I thought it was a lot of good information but slightly cluttered.

            Person 3: I thought it was great. I liked the gauge especially.

How useful was the information provided by the application regarding Mobile Data usage and what did you like/dislike?

Person 1: I liked it, the presentation was nice and the gauge, graph, lists, and all the info was awesome. Especially useful for mobile data.

            Person 2: I thought it was a lot of good information but slightly cluttered

            Person 3: I thought it was great. I liked the gauge especially.

Was the List of Graph method more useful?  Why?

Person 1: I found the list method more useful because I could search through the data used by day and also look at it location based.

            Person 2: I liked the graph, I just wanted to see whether I was cutting back on my usage or not.

            Person 3: They were both okay.

Would you rather have had it display the info more in the background? What are some ways that you feel might have worked better for notification?

            Person 1: I would have liked it to be in the top bar, or maybe a pull-down notification?

            Person 2: It was inconvenient to have to open the application to see my data usage.

Person 3: I thought it displayed the data usage fairly well. I don’t always need to know how much I’m using.

Is there anything that confused you? If so, how did the documentation help?

            Person 1: It was pretty straightforward.

            Person 2: I didn’t need the documentation.

            Person 3:I looked at it, it seemed confusing.

               
From the data, it was clear to see that one thing that this application lacked was non-intrusive notifications. However, in the ways it presented the data, it excelled. It seemed that for the more in depth view of the data usage, the gauge, graph, and listing features were eye-catching and useful. One person noted that the information on the remaining, days left in billing cycle, and projected usage were particularly useful features for planning out data usage. Although the WiFi page was not needed, it was also interesting to get another view on other data usage outside of mobile data. Overall, the interface and design was well made and seemed to be easily usable with clear paths to useful settings.

One downside to this application is that it does not have a background use. In order to receive the notifications and check the data usage, the user needs to open the application.

Discussion of the practical aspects of the experiment (e.g., environmental factors such as noise; modifications of the tasks or procedures used; time required):

In this case, some of the tasks could have been more clearly defined. Also, a couple of the questions on the evaluation form could have been better worded. I could take out one of the questions regarding the usefulness of information and replaced it with a comparison of which they thought was more important and that they would use.

It seemed like the basics of the application were easy to pick up and understand and the time required to set it up and understand the elements of the application for all testers was less than 5 minutes.

I believe that both the usability of the application and presentation of data was both great. However, I believe that a couple things could have been improved.  I liked that some of the settings were editable based on the pages that were selected.  One possible bug is that the realtime monitor kept turning off and every time the application was opened, it would ask if it wanted to be turned on again.

I recommend that this application provided notification throughout all programs or through a non-intrusive method such as on the menu bar. Another area that the application could have improved in was allow for people to search through the help screen.  Since it was long and scrollable, it might have been useful to create links to the separate questions or provide some framework for jumping to one area. Other than that, it proved to excel in almost all other categories and provided a lot of useful information that satisfied users.