selected projects
Weather in Yandex Maps
Weather was being built into Yandex Maps: a precipitation layer, a time slider, and a "X minutes in the rain" figure on each route. The question was whether people notice it while planning a trip, and whether they read it correctly.
I ran a usability study with 5 participants. The task said nothing about weather: you have just left a dentist in an unfamiliar part of town, your dog is waiting at home, taxis are unavailable, work out how to get back.
Whatever weather information people saw first became the information they used, and they did not look for the rest. Not one participant opened the precipitation layer, even though all of them wanted a rain map and understood what the button was for. The time slider was dragged rather than tapped, which is not how it works. And the "minutes in the rain" figure read ambiguously: people could not tell whether it covered the whole route or only the part on foot.
I recommended reducing three entry points into the rain map to one and moving it into the route details, where attention already is; making the slider actually draggable; and using the same order of information for walking and transit routes, since people expect to find the same thing in the same place.
Course project, Yandex Praktikum UX research programme.
I ran a usability study with 5 participants. The task said nothing about weather: you have just left a dentist in an unfamiliar part of town, your dog is waiting at home, taxis are unavailable, work out how to get back.
Whatever weather information people saw first became the information they used, and they did not look for the rest. Not one participant opened the precipitation layer, even though all of them wanted a rain map and understood what the button was for. The time slider was dragged rather than tapped, which is not how it works. And the "minutes in the rain" figure read ambiguously: people could not tell whether it covered the whole route or only the part on foot.
I recommended reducing three entry points into the rain map to one and moving it into the route details, where attention already is; making the slider actually draggable; and using the same order of information for walking and transit routes, since people expect to find the same thing in the same place.
Course project, Yandex Praktikum UX research programme.
Trip summaries in Yandex Travel
The team was considering a personal trip summary feature. The real question was not which numbers to show, but why anyone returns to a past trip at all and what they do with it.
I ran 5 in-depth interviews with people who travel independently and keep some record of their trips.
People photograph trips not to build an archive but to stop worrying that they will forget, so they can stay in the moment. They come back to those memories for two things: the feeling, and an unexpected fact about themselves. Statistics matter not as numbers but as a pattern you would not notice on your own. How people share depends on the audience: aesthetics and approval on public platforms, exhaustion and things going wrong in private chats. And the main barrier turned out to be effort rather than desire. Choosing photos, editing, writing a caption: once the post-trip feeling fades, this becomes work, and archives get abandoned.
The conclusion for the product: value lies not in how much a service stores, but in how easily it turns that into personal meaning without asking the person to do the work.
Course project, Yandex Praktikum UX research programme.
I ran 5 in-depth interviews with people who travel independently and keep some record of their trips.
People photograph trips not to build an archive but to stop worrying that they will forget, so they can stay in the moment. They come back to those memories for two things: the feeling, and an unexpected fact about themselves. Statistics matter not as numbers but as a pattern you would not notice on your own. How people share depends on the audience: aesthetics and approval on public platforms, exhaustion and things going wrong in private chats. And the main barrier turned out to be effort rather than desire. Choosing photos, editing, writing a caption: once the post-trip feeling fades, this becomes work, and archives get abandoned.
The conclusion for the product: value lies not in how much a service stores, but in how easily it turns that into personal meaning without asking the person to do the work.
Course project, Yandex Praktikum UX research programme.
Contact: ogyarygina@gmail.com
