Challenge #3: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign

Part 1

The Challenge

For the 3rd challenge as part of our Ironhack pre-work, we had to to assess the user experience in a travel app and redesign it based on user research, using heuristics usability evaluation for benchmarking and mi-fi wireframes for the redesign.

In the interests of readability, I have split this write up into two parts- first addressing evaluation and user testing to identify pain points and part 2 focusing on solutions and site redesign.

The User

Young couple — 20–40 y/o (2)
You and your partner decide to go to a special place next summer. You realize you have both saved enough for the tickets and are planning to save as much as possible for the next 6 months to do this trip. You want to be efficient and have everything you need organized to enjoy at 100% while there. Even if you’re young, you want to have special moments to celebrate being together.

Our User

User Persona

Destination Research

This year, Karen and her fiance would like to visit Machu Picchu in the summer.

• Nearest airport: Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport, Cusco. From here, you need to travel to Aguas Calientes by bus/train/car. From Agues Clients, you can take a bus or hike to the ruins.
• Currency and exchange rate: The currency of Peru is the nuevo sol, symbolised by placing the three capital letters of PEN before the amount and with no intervening space, sometimes written as “S/“. The current exchange rate is 1euro= PEN3.71.
• Visa: Peru has a liberal entry policy, with holders of 97 major passports or residence permits from EU/USA/UK/Aus/Canada allowed 183 days visa free entry.
• Vaccination and medications: The CDC and WHO recommend the following vaccinations for Peru: hepatitis A, hepatitis B, typhoid, yellow fever, rabies, meningitis, polio, measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), chickenpox, shingles, pneumonia and influenza. Travellers are also recommended to carry medicine for pain/fever, diarrhoea medication, motion sickness pills, altitude pills, water purification tablets, and sufficient quantity of sunscreen and insect repellent.
• Wardrobe recommendations: the weather in Machu Picchu area changes erratically, so plan for all eventualities. Recommended are lots of layers, a good pair of hiking/walking shoes, water proof jacket, a daypack to carry stuff and comfortable clothing.
• Days needed: Machu Picchu itself required a whole day to see, including travel to/from Cusco, 4/5 days is ideal to truly enjoy the experience.
• Best time to visit: July- Oct peak holiday times, April-June less busy periods. The Inca trail is closed every Feb for maintenance.

Heuristic Evaluation

For the purposes of this usability study, I compared Skyscanner, Kayak, Hopper and Tripadvisor mobile apps. However, out of these, only Tripadvisor and Kayak offered attraction and tour reviews, so I decided to do a heuristic comparison between the two.

Heuristic evaluation of Tripadvisor and Kayak

While Kayak has a better score in the heuristic evaluation, I decided to use Tripadvisor ,as it had all the information needed for trip planning in one app. (as desired by our time-constrained user, Karen)

5 second Test

I first did a 5 second test with multiple users in the 25–45 years age bracket, with this image of the home screen of Tripadvisor.

Results of the test were:

1. Almost all the users were able to identify it as a travel app.
2. However, most were unclear on what specific activities the app performs- research, booking, planning etc.
3. Most users felt this app for travel ideas and research
4. The feel of the app was felt to be ‘happy’, ‘clean’, ‘tranquil’, making it skewed more towards vacation planning than business tourism
5. 50% users found it trustworthy, but I do not feel this is relevant, as the brand name is hidden and would have probably changed the answer.

The individual results can be seen with below link:

https://app.usabilityhub.com/tests/7a11a126836a/results/b7a01db6a72

Interviews

I then selected 3 users from the above pool (1 male, 2 female) to interview and task testing. The tasks set were:

1. Book flights for two people to Machu Picchu for dates in Nov ’19.

Result:

• None of the users were able to figure out which were the best dates to book flights for, in terms of price/quality ratio.
• The app also did not select the appropriate airport to Machu Picchu, or mention the closest airport to use in the Machu Picchu attraction brief- I had to help the users out with the name of the airport.
• All users found it easy to change the filter/sorting schema.
• Sort by duration was found to be difficult to understand by one user, as the results were unexpected and confusing.
• When trying to lock price/book ticket, the new window opens in Dutch, with no option to change language.
• From the original flight selection to the flight booking window, the flight details and duration changed, leading two users to restart the search. This happened with multiple results, leading to frustration.

2. Create a travel plan for your trip to Peru, saving the attractions, restaurants and events in a folder.

Result:

• All users were able to create a trip folder easily, preferring to use the Trip tab below, rather than the undefined + symbol in the bottom right of the screen.
• One user tried to go on “things to do” and create a folder from there and was successful after some hunting for the “heart” symbol.
• The details from events and attractions pick up location of last search, but no the dates, needing to be inputed separately for each attraction. Only 1 user could figure out that inputting dates in the header above attraction list would detail the attractions for specific dates.

3. Book a hotel in Aguas Calientes for a couple in a 3/4 star hotel from 14–19 Nov ’19.

Result:

• There is no classification of hotels by stars, only by ratings.
• All users found it easy to search for hotels from the main screen.
• When the user tries to book, it opens a new window for different platform. Here, the prices are both different from originally shown and in a different currency, leading to confusion.
• Hotel class is shown only when you open a specific hotel, so not possible to filter/compare by stars.

Pain Points

These were 4 major pain points, as identified through user testing:

• Lack of indication on how to select best dates for flights, from price/quality perspective.
• No filters available for booking a hotel from a specific category- luxury, family friendly, romantic, etc.
• App redirects user to 3rd party sites which open in a different language
• When a booking window opens in a 3rd party site, the prices are in a different currency and sometimes different from original price shown by Tripadvisor, leading to trustworthiness issues.

This is the end of part 1 of this challenge. Here is the link to part 2, where I will show my site redesign, to address the above pain points.