Ironhack Challenge 3: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign
For this project, I decided to pick a group that is not close to my own age but that I knew I could reach out to for interviews: [Small group of friends — 40–60 y/o] and I decided to set up a trip to the Amalfi coast in Italy.
Researching the area, I discovered the following key things:
· The nearest airport with the best flight: London (Heathrow) to Naples
· Currency: euros, exchange rate: £1 = €1.11
· Don’t need visa if holding a British citizen passport
· To pack: Swimwear and sophisticated and smart clothing for the day and evening. The Amalfi coast is expensive, and people like to dress up there. It’s also an incredibly hilly area with lots of amazing walks so it also makes sense to pack sun cream, insect repellent, sunglasses, and hiking boats. A pair of comfy shoes for the evening is also a good idea as lots of the villages have cobbled streets that can be steep.
· Days needed to visit attraction: Ideally the group would need 5 days to see all the main sights on the Amalfi coast without rushing.
Suggest trip itinerary
The group will fly from London to Naples for the trip and will rent a large 8-seater car.
Day 1. Drive from the airport to Sorrento and stay one night
Day 2. Next stop Positano.
Day 3. A day trip to Capri with the night spent in Positano
Day 4. Next stop Ravello
Day 5. Drive from Ravello to Pompeii and then from Pompeii to Naples airport for a flight back to London.
Benchmarking
I decided to give each of the apps a score out of five for Jakob Nielsen’s 10 general principles for interaction design. These scores are my own but based on thinking about what would work best for my target audience. I really tried to put myself in their shoes and see the apps from their perspective.
Further thinking and notes:
Skyscanner:
· Great for buying tickets and seeing different time / prices options.
· Sections for categories such as solo travel, quick getaway and kid free vacations.
· Has last minute trip deals and recommendations with pricing for variety of destinations.
· Best deals of each month with a photo next to it.
· Flexible tickets: you can change the dates and destination of your booking without incurring a change fee.
· Gives you an option to book hotels also.
· Its nice that it gives you an option to rent a car in the app. It also has filters that let you pick the car that’s within your budget.
· UI is very clear and logical with simple colour coding to help users navigate price brackets etc
Tripadvisor:
· App is very thorough. It has everything you need to book a great holiday but it focus is on user reviews which can become confusing and lead to information overload.
· As soon as you click on the app it opens with a lot of images and information which could be exciting and inspiring for some users or annoying and overwhelming for others.
· Lots of options of things to do and ideas of where to go as well as restaurants, hotels + holiday rentals, flights and travel forums. This again could either excite the user and get them in the mood to buy all these attractions OR it could be confusing if they’re just searching for something specific (in which case the app is not for them)
· Another great feature that I like is that it lets you book a restaurant within an open table integration.
· It’s an amazing app because it shows you real people reviews with photographs which is essential for when you are booking a holiday however if you’re someone that struggles to make a choice then this could easily overwhelm you.
Kayak:
· Minimal and clean design, easy to navigate. Nice to see price alerts integrated into the app.
· The map in the app isn’t 100% clear.
· There are some cool features in the app where you can apply travel filters (like beach / golf / budget) but they are very hidden so would be better if they were easier to find.
· Booking.com promotions are all over the place which make the app less special and can lead to pages feeling cluttered and confusing.
· The app shows you hotels which you will have to book through other apps: booking.com, tripadvisor, opodo, snaptravel, hotels.com. I guess it would make it more special if you could only book hotels/trip through this app without having to redirect me / possibly also register on another one which is very time consuming.
Hopper:
· Playful design with bunny imagery and fun way to show prices using carrots
· Colourful design of the app with transitions using a bunny running on the screen
· Good for someone who is trying to save money and find the best affordable deals
· Colour coded dates that reflect prices. Prices increase from green to yellow to orange to red being the most expensive date to fly.
· The price predictor feature explains if and when the price will rise and approximately how much, allowing travellers to decide whether to book their holiday now or wait.
· It’s a fun app to play with but it does not build trust and seems aimed at younger travellers who want to go on a last-minute adventure. It’s not easy to use the app to plan or research destinations.
Conclusions
Hopper is really not suited to my target audience as it’s an application designed to help people book a spontaneous trips when they don’t really know where they want to go. It’s a fun and unique app that delivers a great user experience for a younger, more tech savvy and budget conscious target audience.
Skyscanner is the most comprehensive of the applications for my target audience and also appears to be the most user friendly. The navigation is clear despite the fact that it’s offering users a huge variety of booking information and options. As Skyscanner performed best in my Benchmarking this is the app that I will be testing with my users.
Testing Skyscanner with my target audience
5 Second Test — what did they see?
Sara:
· The screen was showing me flights to Naples
· There was a money saving tip and I could save money if I changed my dates and times
· I saw a Ryanair and easyJet logos
Olga:
· I saw flight prices to Naples and times that I could fly and a Ryanair logo
· The screen had lots of blue on it
Tom:
· Flight from London to Naples
· Some dates that I have forgotten
· Airlines and prices. I saw Ryanair was £77.
· There was some information about Covid and a promotion, but I don’t know what it was for.
Users tasks
I asked my users to perform the following tasks:
· Open the Skyscanner application
· Search for a return flight from London to Naples for 6 people departing on the morning of 14th October before 10am and returning on the 19th October after 6pm.
· Select the fastest flight with the best price for the group of 6 using an airline that flies from London Heathrow
· Complete the first page of the booking screen for the flight. You only need to enter the name of the first passenger in the group — which can be your own name.
· Complete a hotel search for the first night in Sorrento. You have a budget of £450 per room and you must pick a 5-star property that is in the centre of Sorrento
· Complete the first page of the booking screen for the hotel
Insights
· Users all found searching for a flight very easy. They didn’t seem to get confused or frustrated and logically worked through the booking process.
· In order to book the flight, they need to leave the application and continue to a new website that has no relation to Skyscanner. This caused them all to pause and stopped the flow of their actions
· Completing the first page of the booking screen took place on a new webpage that was not linked to Skyscanner. These pages were long and depending on the user, took time to fill out. Some of these third-party pages where very confusing and I saw the users scrolling back up and down the page looking for error messages when information has not been filled out correctly.
· Returning to the app to book accommodation was not easy. Two of the users missed the ‘Done’ button in the top left of the screen. They ended up closing the app and re-opening it.
· The accommodation meta search page was also simple for the users to navigate. All the users easily found the star and price filters and there was only one hotel that was under £450 and had five stars — which made picking the option very easy!
· The context of the hotel location was easily understood using the apple maps integration that could be zoomed in and out of with gesture-based search.
· Booking the room was easier for users than booking the flight. Although a new window opened, the first booking page required far less information than the flight page.
App Redesign
I decided to add the ‘save my information’ feature to the skyscanner app. The idea is that the user can store their personal information safely within the app for future travels and proceed to book on the Skyscanner app without needing to fill in their details. This would save them time when booking their next trip and greatly reduce the friction of the current Skyscanner booking process. The app would store their name, address, card, passport details etc. User now only need to remember one password. I have added an extra security step to help eliminate fraud: users will get a one-time passcode sent to their phone to confirm that it’s them. I believe that this feature will save travellers time when buying tickets and importantly, reduce the friction of the current time consuming booking journey. This will hopefully lead to a higher booking conversion for Skyscanner and ultimately generate more income for the app. This step also means that users will no longer need to leave the Skyscanner application and create a new account on a new platform. With all the information sitting in one place, users can now easily keep track of their bookings and not have to search through their emails to find booking confirmations from websites and apps they don’t remember booking on!
Key Insights
I found this exercise challanging and it really forced me to see apps that I take for granted in a new light. Interviewing my target audiance was also harder than I expected; it’s a challenge for people to think about what they’re doing and seeing and it took them a while to give me clear answers. I also realised the complexity of the travel booking jounrey and although these apps are clearly designed to be a simple as possible, it’s difficult for them to distil large amounts of information into a small mobile screen. Booking on a website is much simpler when compared to using a mobile device. Ultimately, the mantra that when designing something ‘less is always more’ holds true — but it’s hard to achive in the travel booking space.
