UX/UI Audit and Code Review of an Android App for Delivery Service Drivers

Customer

The Customer is a US private delivery company that has been in the transportation and supply chain industry since the late 1950s. They have over 5,000 employees on board.

Challenge

The Customer had an Android application for tablets used by the company’s delivery drivers. The app displayed the list of packages for each day’s delivery, automatically planned optimized routes, and let delivery drivers scan customers’ QR codes to confirm deliveries.

While generally helpful, the app frustrated users with functionality bugs and design flaws. The Customer’s in-house app development team couldn’t properly address the issues reported by the users as they had to grapple with partially outdated code and could rarely roll out fixes without causing new issues. Due to this, the Customer started looking for a development company that would provide a professional opinion on the app’s issues.

Solution

The Customer commissioned ScienceSoft to perform a comprehensive UX/UI audit and code and architecture quality assessment of their app. After the Customer outlined the scope of work, ScienceSoft assembled a team of a UX expert and a senior Android developer led by a PM, and they started the project.

UX/UI audit

The UX/UI audit uncovered 19 usability issues, each given High, Medium, or Low priority for resolution. Among the critical issues were:

• No main screen in the app for routing users.
• Dynamic refreshment of the ribbon menu, which should have been static.
• The mostly unused ‘Settings’ element included in the key bottom navigation.

ScienceSoft’s UX expert followed up all 19 issues with detailed recommendations on how to fix them. Some of the tips offered several options to give the Customer freedom of choice.

The UX expert also listed general recommendations on the use of colors, buttons, and notifications according to the best UX practices and proposed changes to the menu structure to make navigation through the app more intuitive.

Code and architecture audit

Upon analyzing the app’s core files, ScienceSoft’s senior Android developer pointed out multiple issues with deprecated third-party dependencies, memory leaks, and insufficient test coverage. The most severe challenges were related to the poor maintainability of the app’s code: the approaches to the data flow setup and implementation of UI elements made it difficult to update and evolve the app.

Along with describing the causes of all issues, ScienceSoft’s senior developer provided extensive guidance and 31 tips on improving code and making it easier to maintain. The tips were classified as ‘recommended’ (4), ‘highly recommended’ (12), and ‘criticial’ (15).

Results

The Customer received two presentations and two reports with the UX/UI audit and code review findings. Recommendations given by ScienceSoft helped the Customer provide thorough tasks to their in-house developers to improve app’s usability and maintainability.

Technologies and Tools

Code and architecture audit: Node.js NPM, JetBrains Upsource, JetBrains Webstorm IDE (analytical tools), Google Chrome Developer Tools, Firefox Developer Tools, Microsoft Edge Developer Tools.

Usability testing: Jakob Nielsen UX heuristics, features and workflow assessment.