Challenge 3: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign

For IronHack’s third UX/UI challenge, I was tasked with evaluating the usability of a number of travel apps and prototyping a redesign of one of them.

To do this, I first had to select a user type to test scenarios against. I chose the ‘Young group’ who are a party of 4 between the age of 20–40. From the description that was provided, I noted a few keywords that were particularly important to this group:

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.

(Photo by Elevate on Unsplash)

As this group wants to travel to Italy to see the Colosseum, I needed to do some background research:

Nearest airport / most convenient airport to destination
The nearest airport is Rome Ciampino , however a train from Fiumicino Aeroporto runs hourly to Rome’s main train station and only takes 32 minutes.

Currency and exchange from your own currency
Euros. The group is travelling from within Europe.

Medical needs: vaccination, visa, etc
Visa not needed, but corona vaccination may be required for travelling during their chosen dates.

Wardrobe recommendations
In June, Rome sees an average high-temperature of 27°C and an average low-temperature 15°C. Wardrobe essentials include short sleeve tops, summer skirts and dresses, light trousers, comfortable walking sandals, a sun hat and sunglasses, a swimsuit and flip flops.

Days needed to visit attraction
Direct flights from Berlin to Rome take about 2 hours. As there are many other attractions close to the Colosseum, the group could visit for 1 week and have plenty to do.

(Photo by Ruben Ramirez on Unsplash)

Next, I assessed 3 travel apps that the group could use against Nielsen’s 10 Heuristic Principles. Tripadvisor topped this first evaluation.

Usability evaluation results.

I then took Tripadvisor’s app into user testing. Firstly, I asked 3 people to participate in a 5-second test. Results showed two main problems:

1. The name of the app could not be recalled
2. The user group wasn’t sure that the app would be of any benefit to them.

I continued by asking test participants to complete a series of activities within the app. The activities were:

• Book return flights for 4 people, departing June 2022
• Look for accommodation for 1 week for the group. The accommodation needed to be close to the colosseum and have a swimming pool. The group also wants daily breakfast
• Find a colosseum tour that you can suggest to the group.

Some findings from the tests included:

• Users were unable to book flights that far in advance. This only became apparent after scrolling to the end of a long calendar. This ended the activity with no further assistance provided to users in the app
• Users were not given an option to select ‘daily breakfast’ in the filters sections, where it was expected
• There was only an assumption that breakfast is included in the accommodation title (ie. B&B), however, it often was not confirmed in the listing description
• Users had to open multiple accommodation listings and read through long text descriptions to find the distance to the colosseum
• Some text descriptions were in Italian only
• Users were unable to save a preferred colosseum tour listing without signing up to Tripadvisor.

Current Tripadvisor app design

From these findings, I chose to prototype a solution to address the flight booking issue and also the company recollection problem.

I wanted to replace the scrolling calendar with a single month calendar, that also allowed for date entry past the currently available flights. I thought it was important to remove the current “dead-end” in the app as I knew that eventually these flights will be added.

Calendar redesign: No scrolling and users can enter in dates past the currently available flights.

With these dates entered (and no flights currently listed) I wanted to give the user the option to receive an update as soon as flights became available. I also decided to present accommodation options that are available for these dates, and are “personalised” to early booking users.

No more dead-end: Users can be notified when flights become available. Users are also presented with early bird accommodation specials.

As a small edition, I changed the home button icon in the lower section navigation to the Tripadvisor logo, to help address the app brand problem.

A small icon change to help uses remember which company the app is created by.

Check out the full prototype.

Some things I learned during this process:

• Nielsen’s 10 Heuristic Principles is a thorough benchmarking tool to assess usability. It does, however, take some expertise to make this assessment. Now that I have completed the assessment process once, I can already see that this is an area I will need to improve in. But, hey, practice makes perfect!
• The 5-second test is a great approach to gather rapid feedback from users. This test is probably best used for higher fidelity prototypes and to assess the impact of competitor products.
• Usability task testing opens the door to a greater understanding of how a design will work in real-world contexts. Compared to the heuristics assessment, which is aimed towards system functionality, usability tasks uncover how people will actually respond to the available functions of that system.