Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign
Have you ever wondered what makes people leave their homes and travel around the world? There are many answers to this question. When traveling, every place you visit has a story. Being in a strange place itself is far better than just reading about it. Learning about the history of a place, the people and the culture gets more fascinating as you travel. Meeting the local people, discovering their culture, trying their traditional food or simply being there with them is an unforgettable experience.
“Do you have a travel bucket list? Make it your priority!”
This is the motto of the family I am going to redesign the app for to make sure they experience seamless travel. As we all know spending not enough time with family can lead to a weak family bond. It’s important to prioritize travel. Unfortunately, we are so busy with life activities that often planning a vacation is something we end up doing at the last minute.
Whether you go for winter sun on the Red Sea Riviera, to see the Pyramids at Giza or explore ancient Cairo, family holidays in Egypt are awe-inspiring and magical for kids.
Relaxing atmosphere, good weather and beautiful surroundings — you can definitely find all that in Giza, a holiday destination place I had in my mind for a long time already. Getting to know about this city and checking out the possibilities around that area almost made me book my next holiday, but this time lets focus on my project.
Who am I redesigning for?
In this assignment I had to jump into the shoes of a world traveler and in my case, I decided to redesign the app for a family with 2 kids. While there is plenty of apps that help you making your travel dreams come true, I got to compare at least three main ones and these were: Kayak, TripAdvisor or Skyscanner. To identified the one that performs better for my selected user type I conducted Usability Heuristics evaluation with Nielsen’s Principles. Honestly, I was surprised how all this apps perform well. Even though I travel at least 2x a year I have never used any of them before so I decided to spend some time playing around with it.
I loved the minimalistic look of Kayak app, but after a long research I decided who will be my winner. When it comes to planning a holiday including kids, Resident Advisor was most suitable app from what I could choose from. In my opinion, the best experience a family could have is when they are able to book everything they need, for a perfect holiday just in a single app. I do not have kids, but I can imagine that planning in advance and no disappointment after arrival in that case are priorities number one for any family, so things are getting very excited.
Testing
In my next step I had to create a task, that could help me to get an overview about the usability of the app. The purpose of doing it was to see if there was any pain point while completing a task. The goal was to improve it and make the app more usable for my selected group of travelers.
Visiting Pyramids in Giza, combined with relaxing time and being constantly surrounded by kids seems like a proper challenge. While I was getting to know the app, a lot of ideas came to my head. Finally I created a simple tasks:
Every product or service wants to improve the life of its users. Fulfil a need. And because of that become a great success. But how can you find out what your users actually need? It’s very simple: keep asking them, until you find your right information. Don’t assume that you know what your users need, but simply get to know your users by researching their experiences. In my next step I interviewed 4 people. I started with the five-second test.
5-second test is a user experience and design research method that requires a participant to view a visual element for 5 s, then answer questions about (a) what was most easily or vividly remembered and (b) what was understood about the design’s information and/or purpose.
The five-second test is a simple usability test to optimize the clarity of your designs and improve conversion rates by measuring people’s first impressions. None of my users did have any problems guessing what the app is about and what services it is going to provide.
I have got a lot of feedback regarding completing the task. I summarized all of them and picked the one that in my opinion will make a big difference in functionality of the app.
1. “The price is per night while I have the total amount for the whole week. I am able to recalculate the correct amount, but you should have both options provided.”
2. “I can’t find ‘free cancellation’ filter. This information is provided by some hotels.”
3. “To check pictures I have to click on the hotel. It just takes too much time to be honest, especially when you have to choose from more than 10 hotels. It also gets confusing after a while and I can’t remember which pictures are associated with which hotel.”
4. “The price for a room is not really clear to me. I wish there was more information about what I am going to book. Is it a double room? Family suite? Information about the size of the room and what is included like air conditioning, are one of the most important factors for me while looking for a place to stay. Being constantly redirected somewhere else I find very disturbing.”
5. “I can set the filter by ‘traveler rating’ but not by ‘amount of ratings’. Again — this task requires more time, because I have to screen everything by myself on the main page.”
6. “I always read reviews from other users so for me they are very important. I would add categories highlighting the information included in people’s review for example — perfect or bad room cleanliness, great or bad location etc.”
7. “I would like to be able select 2 accommodation and compare them with each other!”
Redesign Wireframes
As we can see there is a lot of options I could choose from. While some of the feedback were more complex, I have picked my favorite ones, that will speed up the whole selecting process.
1. In light of the coronavirus outbreak, many people are asking themselves one question: what am I going to do, if my flight will be cancelled? What if I get sick just before the holiday? Having free booking cancellation seems like a great option for any kind of those situations. Unfortunately checking this information by every single hotel unit is considered as time consuming process. I added the possibility to display bookings with free cancellation only.
2. Adding total cost option
Previously, users were only able to see the price per night. The total cost was unknown until the user was redirected to another page. Giving 2 options created better overview of the whole booking process.
3. Creating extra filters
Previously, users were not able to filter bookings by amount of reviews. Since my users pointed “reviews” as one of the main factors, regarding booking process I decided to put more attention to it. Having possibility of looking only at reliable hotels will help people with making the right choice.
4. Swiping pictures on the main page
Users were able to see only one picture of the hotel on the main page. Clicking on each hotel page allowed users to see more photos in the gallery. This way cost too much time and some people got confused which images are associated with which hotel, while browsing the app. I came with solution that will allow users scrolling photos of the hotel on the main page. I displayed dots (indicators) at the bottom of Picture. The current image indicator is shown as a white dot, while the other ones are smaller, colored in gray. User is able to slide photos in either direction.
Learnings
Before I started working on this exercise, I have been reading a lot about UX. Looking at other’s people work made me think like — How long does it take to complete?! I knew this is going to be the most difficult challenge I have got to do for my pre-work! Stepping into someone else shoes it’s always difficult. In design, one thing is certain: doing something by myself, for myself will get me nowhere. I am not sure if the way I solved the problems was correct, but that is what learning is all about :) Thank you!
