Challenge 3 : Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign

For this third challenge, I had to do analyze usability and redesign a selected travel app.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

User type

Marie is 30 year old fashion designer freelancer, going to Japan for the first time. She plan to the most out of the 90 days she authorised to stay there without the need of a visa.

She already saved up for one year but has nevertheless some budget constraints.

She wants to discover big cities as well as country side. Her favourite hobby is to go hiking. She likes people and wants to meet new ones her age, possibly keep in touch with them and eventually invite them back to visit her own country.

She decided to travel this year because she made a promise to herself to visit Japan before turning 31, even celebrating her birthday there if possible.

She doesn’t have her driver’s licence and since Japan has good transport links she purchase a Japan Rail Pass in advance.

Research

• There are a fair amount of airport spread out across the five main islands of Japan, six of which are international. She will arrive in Haneda since it’s only 20 minutes in public transport from Tokyo which is much cheaper than any other transport service and much shorter than the 1h40 min when landing in Narita.
• Her best option concerning currency is actually to change it online. It’s way cheaper than doing it in banks and more practical than doing it in Japan since ATM are not always accessible 24/7 but at bank opening hours. Also she can bring up to 1 000 000 ¥ (~7958,5€) in cash.
• According to Institut Pasteur, it’s strongly recommended to get vaccinated for Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid fever and Japanese encephalitis. She doesn’t need a visa if she stay up to 90 days.
• You can bring medication only if it’s for personal use and doesn’t exceed one month of prescription. If longer prescription is needed a special authorization name Yakkan Shoumei will be mandatory. You will also need your doctor’s prescription in both cases. Medications are classified by categories, some of them like narcotics will need another special authorization. Other are prohibited, if you really that particular substances, you will have to contact Japan Customs. For over the counter drugs, Japan have several well-known drugstore chains.
• Summer in Japan are hot and very humid. It’s advised to bring light and breathable clothes when travelling in that season. Meanwhile, winter is very different depending if you are in Hokkaidō (North Japan) where winters are really long and cold (between - 7° and 2°) or if you are in Honshu (central Japan), Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa (South and South West Japan) where temperatures are bearable. Overall it’s advised to bring warm clothes even a good coat and shoes if planning going North. The best seasons to travel there is spring and autumn. The latter is the less touristic, the weather is nice, you can still hike and the momiji (maple leaves) viewing are to die for. Since Marie would like to celebrate her birthday there, which is in November, it’s perfect.

Benchmarking

I have compared three travel app, Kayak, Skyscanner and Hopper.

While Kayak and Hopper were both pretty pleasant to test and experiment with, Skyscanner in the other hand was really disappointing and annoying to use.

There is no real consistency, some buttons and icons are green, some charcoal grey and another pale grey and blue. The home page is not well balanced at all. There so much space wasted between the different UI elements, for example the space between the 3 main icons.

Meanwhile the flight page is really crowded, there is little to no visibility. The progressive bar is so thin and discreet that I nearly missed it. It takes minimum seven screens to be able to book one ticket and most of the time, you are redirected to a website.

I really wanted to choose Hopper since it was good and pretty well different than the other two but the accommodation options were only available for iOS. My users and me have Android phones so I have to go with Kayak. Kayak was also the service that provided the best and the most options for Marie’s destination.

Testing

I have interviewed 3 users that have the same profile as Marie.

They were presented with this two tests:

• A 5 secondes test where they had to watch the screen and when 5 seconds passed, had to describe what they saw and feel.
• A series of tasks they had to accomplishe within the app.

The tasks I chose to give them was:

1. Book a round-trip ticket from early September to the end of November. (Having a return ticket with a fixed date is mandatory when travelling in Japan without a visa or a temporary one)
2. Find one without too long or too many stopover but with cost in mind
3. Find a nice but cheap guest house or ryokan (japanese traditional hostel) in Tokyo for one week.

Insight

When presented with the 5 seconds test, the users immediately recognised what was the screen about.

It was the same for typing and searching however regarding date flexibility when trying to book a flight, two of them missed it and the third one had a hard time to find it. In order to use it, you have to click on the date then on a down arrow below the said date.

For booking accommodation, it was a little more tricky for them. They didn’t seem to quite understand the “meilleur choix “ option (Recommended when the app is set in English) since it was proposing accommodations that was pretty expensive but presented like it was the best deal possible they can have. And if you checked “promos” (deals in English) and “meilleur prix”( cheapest in English) you can find better.

There is another problem that they find, the filter option. The button was tiny in comparison of the importance of its function. There are a lot of crucial and useful criteria in this menu. It was even more missable when using the app with night mode on. I find it quit puzzling that they didn’t showcase it better.

Redesign wireframes

For flights research, I chose to place the flexibility option on the second screen where you can enter your destination and date of departure. Users can not miss it now.

Regarding accommodation, I chose to change the order of price recommendations and to place the filter and map view button above the different options of accommodation.

What I learned?

Organisation is key! Renaming your layers, research the icons, the font and color that you want to use before hand.

Also practice, practice, practice!