Challenge 3: Usability evaluation and site redesign

Introduction

The exercise at hand is all about redesigning a traveling app, in this particular case, I’m going to be working with TripAdvisor since it’s the one that best fits my defined user’s needs. Several users will have been interviewed and observed in their process to comply with a pre-established flow to find what they struggle with, but also what they deem as acceptable or great. The goal is to come up with solutions that can help the users navigate the app with more ease than in its current state.

User definition

Young group — 20–40 y/o (4)
You and your friends have decided to invest and spend some quality time together. You are planning your trip one year in advance to really make it happen and accommodate everybody’s schedules and needs. You’d like to share as much time together and plan for a lot of fun. You’re interested in a mix of culture and leisure. You have all saved for the last year for the trip so, while you’re still price-conscious this is the opportunity to spoil yourselves.

The budget of the group would be 20,000MXN per person. They don’t have a problem with sharing hotel rooms to save on some costs.

The plan

This group of friends plans to visit Chichen Itzá for several reasons; it’s local tourism, it’s accessible in both timeframes and prices, and it offers the opportunity to do other activities as a visit to Chichen Itzá shouldn’t take more than a day and it puts you close to the Mexican Caribbean and the variety of activities you can do there.

The drive from Chichén Itzá to Cancún takes roughly 2–2:30 hours, which means the whole visit to the site can be done in a single day. Renting a car and driving from Cancún to Chichén Itzá and back would be the best option for a group of 4, as it offers the most freedom in terms of scheduling and follow up activities.
After the visit to Chichén Itzá, the group plans to stay at Cancún for 4 more days. The total trip would consist of 6 days; 1 for traveling, 1 for the visit to Chichén Itzá and 4 to stay at Cancún, along with the return flight.

Travel details

• Flying from Mexico City’s International Airport to Cancún’s International Airport.
• There’s no currency exchange as the trip would be within the same country of origin.
• There are no special needs: no passport, vaccination, etc.
• Wardrobe recommendations would be light clothing, preferably running/hiking shoes to walk around the site. Bug repellent is strongly recommended on site.
• Only one day is required to visit the site.
• The best time to visit the site would be from April to June, to avoid hurricane season and the torrential rains that can come from that.

Tasks to perform

Our user will be performing a series of tasks to evaluate the usability of the application, and finding the pain points or areas of opportunity that can be improved upon.

The tasks are the following:

1. Booking flights for 4 people, from Mexico City to Cancún.
2. Booking a hotel in Cancún’s hotel zone.
3. Booking an extra activity in the vicinities of Cancún (club, water park, etc).
4. Booking a restaurant for dinner.

Insights

By asking the users to perform the tasks at the time of the interview, we could identify and discuss the points which they felt were problematic to properly complete said tasks. With the interview and observation, we gained valuable information regarding what was most problematic, what was done well and what could use improvement but was not necessarily a pressing matter.

By analyzing the behavior of the user and discussing with them, we could identify what TripAdvisor is doing well:

• Displaying connecting flight information
• Maintaining TA’s look and feel when redirecting you to another page to purchase tickets.
• The breadcrumb when looking at a hotel’s details which allows you to quickly go to a specific section (reviews, for example) is really good.
• The picture classification when seeing hotels is great.
• Cart options allow you to keep everything within trip advisor.

Along with this, it was possible to identify pain points and problems the users have with the app:

• The “heart/save” option could be more visible.
• Price consistency (displaying the correct currency/nomenclature is important). In some screens it appears without comas, for example.
• Restaurant filtering options are not the best.
• There is no consistency with filter location on flights/hotels/restaurants. Users expect them to be roughly in the same location and that’s not the case.
• Filters offer too much information which is confusing. Selecting several filter options is not doable.
• Flight “extras” (insurance, for example) appeared to be pre-selected rather than giving the user the chance to select them.
• Some things are in English and some are in Spanish.
• Seat selection is not completely clear.
• No way to eliminate certain pop-ups on screen.

Redesign

For this exercise, I will be focusing on the options presented to the users; filters, buttons having a clear and visible function, visual clutter with too many options. These were the most confusing to the user and the ones that should be solved first.

My process for redesigning the app was to have those priorities well in mind and trying to make the changes necessary without altering the overall flow of the app.

On the first screen modified (Hotels), I decided to go for the internal consistency of filter location of those found on flights (which is what you usually buy/book first). I eliminated the bottom bar which included the filters and moved it to the top right side; this allows me to have less visual clutter on the actual hotels visualization and it eliminates one place where the user can miss click when scrolling. The other change to this screen was changing the “heart/save” option to a button which makes the function clear.

HOTELS

On the second and third screens (flight filters) I decided to again eliminate the visual clutter created by having too many options. I decided to keep the top 4 filters as they are and added a drop down menu for the rest. I also added a functionality in which you can select several filters at once, to create a more focused search. The “DONE” button was also made to be more visible, as it tends to get lost a little in the visual clutter of the actual configuration.

Finally, for the restaurants, I first decided to give the option to eliminate the pop-up warnings at the top. They take up space and create visual clutter and they are not necessary every time you open up the restaurants section. After that, I decided to add filtering options at the top, just like with hotels.

Another change was simply switching the order of the browsing, giving the user the option to first search by meal and then by restaurant, which makes locating a specific restaurant a bit easier.

Conclusions

My main goal on this exercise was understanding how users make use of an app, what the main problems are and what can be secondary or less important. Identifying those elements and being able to create a hierarchy for problem solving was key for me, since it allowed me to focus on the elements that were the most pressing to be solved and those were the ones included in this redesign exercise.

Removing visual clutter helps the users better navigate an interface, because there’s less elements that can be distracting or that can be miss-clicked. Making better use of filtering options is also important since it can help users find exactly what they need instead of having to browse for several minutes to find something that fits their needs.

One very important factor is that while I interviewed a fair number of users, a broader sample could give us different results and could change the way in which we make a redesign.