Challenge 3 — Ironhack’s Prework: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign
For this third Ironhack’s challenge, we are going to jump into the shoes of a world traveler! Our task is to evaluate and propose, if necessary, some changes for a better usability of a chosen popular travel website (focusing on the mobile version) based in a user persona.
User type
The first step I had to take through this challenge was to choose one of the seven wonders of the new millennium to place a destination for this study-case and, I elect Rome. After that, it was given several options of user types that respond to different scenarios and I had to select the user type according to own audience reach.
Brazilian young couple — 20 – 40 y/o
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.
Some important information about the destination:
Destination: Rome, Italy.
Date of the trip: September.
Nearest airport: Fiumicino Airport.
Currency: Euro (€).
Visa: No, as a Brazilian you can stay in Europe for tourism purposes for 3 months without a visa.
Medical needs: No.
Wardrobe recommendations: Fresh, comfortable summer outfits and also a jacket, for the nights. The climate cools down in September with the approach of autumn, so the temperatures are more comfortable with highs of 27°C and lower at night around 16°C.
Benchmarking
After choosing the user type and conducting a little research about the destination, the next step is to evaluate three different apps for planning a trip applying the Usability Heuristics proposed by Jakob Nielsens - 10 general principles for interaction design. The applications that I select to go through the process are: Hooper, Kayak and Skyscanner.
Considering all the performances and regarding the user type (focused on the efficiency of the process and let everything organized in advance), the most suitable platform for their task could be Kayak or Skyscanner, since both achieve the same results.
After analyzing the two of them in detail, through all their features, I decided to pick up Skyscanner for this study-case. Mainly because it’s design seems simpler and more intuitive and also due to the fact that Kayak app keeps reloading it’s home screen every time you start a new search.
Testing
Before starting to perform the user testing, I designed a simple task for the interviewee to do meanwhile the interview happens. The task consists to book a car rental and “purchase” a flight from Recife (Brazil) to Rome (Italy) placed at 1th — 15h of September. Besides that, I encouraged the interviewee to add some filters based on their budget and personal preferences. Throughout this task, I was keeping track of every click they had to make until reach the last screen.
Some questions made during the interview:
- It is easy to use?
- What would you change in order to improve the usability?
- Have you missed any possible additional features?
During the test, I could collect meaningful feedback based on interviewee’s experiences.
Pain point 01: Number of passengers should have same exposure size as date and routes information.
Solution: Include an icon as used equally in other features.
Pain point 02: Options provided as filters for the sort feature is not sufficient.
Solution: Additional filters as “number of connections” should be included.
Pain point 03: Price alerts feature is conditioned to the user log in into the app. Such an important feature as this one should be provided freely.
Solution: Enable price alerting even when user is logged out from the app.
Pain point 04: User support features should be included directly into the app itself, and not through a forwarded web page.
Solution: Implement user support features within the app.
Pain point 05: Inconsistency between searched flight prices and real ones happens occasionally.
Solution: Implement real time checking and updating of listed flight prices.
Pain point 06: Lack of integrated search between flights, hotels and car rentals.
Solution: Implement integrated search between flights, hotels and car rentals feature within the app. This would output holiday packages including one item of each category.
Pain point 07: Options shown on airlines filter list is not clear. Also, it is not clear which criteria is used for price displaying.
Solution: Display only those airlines in which flights are available. Pricing should be displayed for all options.
Pain point 08: Important features such as map pin display for hotel options should also include car rentals.
Solution: Implement same map pin display feature for car rental searching.
Redesigning Wireframes
After collecting all valuable data from my interviews, now it is time to propose some improvements for Skyscanner’s platform.
In the first screen, I’ve made just a little change, putting the number of travelers with more highlights. In the second and third screens, I’ve displayed the tab of travelers with the same importance as the route and the date, because one of the interviewees had troubles seeing it and made the change from 1 to 2 passengers when looking for flight tickets.
In the following image, on the first screen, I just remove all the companies in which doesn’t appear available flights and put to all of them the price. In the second and third images, I displayed the same feature that appears when you are looking for a hotel, to provide the user information of which car rental distance is more convenient for him.
To provide more options for the users I’ve developed a new feature called “packages” or in Portuguese, “pacotes”, that will offer the best deals if you book all the three features of the app: flight tickets, hotels, and car rentals. That way you will search more efficiently.
Conclusions
Skyscanner is one of the most used travel apps, with more than 168K evaluation reviews on the Apple Store, rated with 4,8 out of 5 stars. Even though, it still has some things to be improved.
This challenge showed me how you can always improve something that you already consider good.