UX/UI Exercise 3: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign

Natalia Aquino
Nov 4 · 7 min read
Photo by Kukzaa

For our last challenge the prework we have to evaluate and redesign an existing travel app. To figure out which app we are going to evaluate and redesign I am going to undergo a few steps:

After following these steps, I will end up with one platform which I’m going to evaluate further following the next steps:

  • Testing: 5 seconds test
  • Insight: summarise the results

Now we will be ready to redesigning and start making the Wireframes!

User Type

Worldtrotter, Backpacker — 18–38 y/o (1)
You’ve decided to finally go visit that wonder that has been sitting in your dreams for a long time now. Yo don’t have a long time to plan but also you don’t need it. You’ll be traveling in 6 months and are open to almost any possibility but have a budget constraint. You are price-cautious and prefer experiences where you have a chance to meet people and make acquaintances to enjoy the wonder together. You are not picky and you can accommodate the most affordable, adventurous, genuine experience.

Persona

Picture from @Beauvanboheemen on Instagram

Beau van Boheemen (or Sun Chaser as her friends might call her) is a 27 year old Worldtrotter. Although born and raised in Amsterdam, her heart belongs to the world. At 17 years old she made her first solo travel, backpacking through Asia, and that’s when her love for travel started. In the past few years she travelled all around the world. Her next destination will be Mexico, where she will spend around 6 months. As per usual she doesn’t have a long term plan, she only booked her flights, has a small budget and mostly sleeps in hostels.

Destination research

Jose Ignacio Soto/Shutterstock.com

Flights

To travel from Amsterdam to Mexico there are two possibilities, the first one is to fly from Amsterdam to Cancun where you can arrive within 13 hours (€787,-) up to almost 30 hours (€422,-). The second possibility is to start your trip in Mexico City which will take you in between 11 hours (€823,-) or 15 hours (€573,-)

Currency

One Mexican Peso equals 0,047 euro. An easy shortcut to calculate Mexican Pesos to Euros is to take away one number and split that amount in half. For example: 1000 Mexican Pesos is around 50 Euros. Also an easy app to calculate the exact amount is ‘CurrencyForeign’.

General

You will be entering Mexico on a tourist Visa, you will get it when you land in Mexico. With this Visa you are allowed to stay in Mexico for a maximum of 180 days, so that is definitely something travellers needs to keep in the back of their head. Vaccinations are not mandatory, but getting vaccinations for DTP, Hepatitis A and Rabies is recommended. The weather in Quintana Roo/Yucatan will be tropical and sunny. Around Mexico City it can rain and the evenings are chillier so make sure to pack a raincoat and sweater for that area. Since Worldtrotters don’t have a schedule they have enough time to explore all the important attractions including Chichen Itza and Teotihuacán.

Benchmarking

After identifying the travellers we’re working with and sorted out what the trip will look like, it’s time to compare the different platforms. For this trip I’m going to try out and test the next platforms: Kayak, Skyscanner, Trip Advisor and Hopper. After this I decided to drop Hopper, since you can only use this platform through downloading the app and not everyone feels like downloading an app to book a flight. With the three of them left I’ve applied the usability heuristic evaluation using Nielsen’s Principles on them.

Skyscanner

Skyscanner is really easy to use, the colours used on the website make you feel calm and it works really straightforward. The prices at the top give a really clear view of the results, they show you the cheapest route, the fastest route and the best price/time option.

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is another great website that I personally use frequently, but only to read reviews and safe restaurants or activities. As you can see on the front page there is a lot going on and a lot of things you can do with platform, but things also tend to be a little too much.

Kayak

This is the first time I have used Kayak, I’m not sure why, maybe because Skyscanner has a reputation of always finding you the cheapest tickets and is more common here in Holland. After using it for the first time I was pleasant surprised about the usability of this website. The fact that is shows exactly when the prices are higher when you select the date is really convenient. The design is clean and calm, it makes you want to buy book a ticket on this website.

At first, I was pretty certain that I was going to move on with Skyscanner. But after testing the several websites I decided to work with Kayak. Although they’re all great websites, Kayak came out the best during the evaluation.

Testing

5 second test

I’ve selected four people for an interview and started of with the five second test.

Five second tests are a method of user research that help you measure what information users take away and what impression they get within the first five seconds of viewing a design. They’re commonly used to test whether web pages are effectively communicating their intended message.

Questions I asked after letting them look at the Kayak page for 5 seconds:

What did you see? What can this tool do for you? Where would you search for a flight?

All of them saw a website where they can book something. Two people saw a website where they can book flights, one saw a page where he can rent a car and the last one saw a website where she can book everything (hotel+flight+car) all together. Most of them say it had a feeling of a cheap flight company, probably because of the colour and the fact that Easyjet has the same colour. Where they book their own flights? They all use Skyscanner, but 3 of them will eventually book on the website of the airline itself.

Usability test

Now let’s move on to the usability of the platform. I’m going to book what our persona Beau would book and see if we come across any pain points we can improve. Beau will travel for 6 months with a budget of €6000,- this includes the flights. She doesn’t have a strict plan for her travel, the only thing she needs are flights from Amsterdam to Cancun, then from Mexico City back to Amsterdam. The only thing she’s booking besides the flight is her hostel for the first 2 nights so she won’t have to worry about where to sleep when she arrives.

Wireframing

Going through the usability test make me come up with a couple of pain points which I’m going to improve.

On the first page that I changed I added an ‘Go back’ arrow on the top, I also moved the button ‘Filter’ to the top and deleted it from the button. Made the cheapest price another colour so it pops out more, colour is the same as their top bar. I also added ratings to the different airlines.

The second page I improved is the hotel page. On the first page I added the button ‘Rooms’ since you would have different rooms but you can’t find them on this page. I also added ratings to the website you’re going to redirected to. On the second page I added an pop-up saying you’re are going to be redirected to another page.

On the last page I edited I added ratings to the websites, highlighted the cheapest option with their own colour and added an pop-up telling you that you’re being redirected.

Conclusion

This last challenge felt like a really complete challenge where a lot of the material learned in the previous chapters all came together. I really enjoyed doing this and it felt really useful. When you first start searching for improvements (before the testing) it is pretty hard to come up with something, you can see these platforms work with topnotch designers. When you start testing you can see some things they could change (although maybe not a lot), but I did learn how important it is to select a user type and actually test the product.

Natalia Aquino

Written by

UX/UI design student @ Ironhack

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