Ironhack’s Prework : Mathilde Gau_challenge 3

This last challenge aims at conducting a Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign for a travel website. I must say that regarding the current context, it was nice to prepare a trip, even if it wasn’t for real !

To conduct my evaluation, I interviewed several users.
They were responding to the user type of a person between 20 and 30 years old, preparing a trip to Rome for 10 days, with 3 friends. They want to spend quality time together, and have a nice mix between culture and leisure. They have saved money for this trip, but they still prefer to get good prices.

The highlight of this trip will be the visit of the Coliseum in Rome, as it is one of the 7 wonders in the world.

I chose to work on Skyscanner, as it is the website that is best suited for my user type and the scenario. Skyscanner is available in French, and allows users to compare multiple choices for flights, hotels, and car hire.

During the interviews I have focused on Usability Evaluation according to a scenario I have created. I wanted to have a complete view on all the main actions that a user will take on the website.
Here are the 3 tasks I asked the users to do :

• Look for a direct flight for the month of October, you want to find a good deal on the price since you are flexible. Your trip will last 10 days, and you will take the tickets for everyone.
• Look for a place. You want it to feel Roman, to be located in the center since you want to go out with your friends and your budget for the 10 days is €2500.
• You would like to take a road trip to enjoy the Italian countryside. Furthermore, you will plan it on a week day to avoid traffic, and you don’t want to go to the other side of the city as you will have to get up early to make the most of your day.

After these interviews, I wrote down on post-its the pain points the users have met, and I ended up sorting it first by website section (flights, hotels, car hire), then by step (looking for what I want, sorting the results).

The main problems I chose to solve are :

• [Flights] The prices calendar to find the best deals on the flights is not intuitive : there are 2 calendars, but you only see one, the prices don’t update.
• [Flights] It is not possible to choose the airport when the users type in their criteria.
• [Flights] The search criteria on the results page are not visible, so the user is not sure to have put the correct ones.
• [Flights] There is a lot of confusion on the flights details (is the flight direct, why are there 2 companies, is it a round trip flight?)
• [Hotels] The “Sort and filter” button is not visible enough.
• [Hotels] The place of the “number of persons” field is not intuitive, it should be first.
• [Hotels] The prices information are not clear and do not match the filters (users asked for a total price and have a price per night on the result page
• [Car hire] It is confusing where to click to validate the filter, and easy to confuse with “Reinitialize filters”.
• [Car hire] Problems on the location search bar : First, the user wants to type an address because nothing tells what to type. And when the user types in the city where he wants to get the car, he only sees the airport.
• [Car hire] The user doesn’t understand the car categories at all, and feels that some categories don’t belong together.
• [Car hire] The results page causes a lot of confusion : the user doesn’t see the cars, doesn’t understand the location information.

In order to redesign the website to solve the main users’ pain points, I have kept in mind the different website categories. I did that because I think it is important to be task-oriented when thinking about how to solve the users problems.

Here are the solutions I have in mind and will develop in my prototypes :

• [Flights] Enable the multi-selection of airports in the search criteria.
• [Flights] Improve the prices calendar : one for the round trip instead of one for the departure and one for the return.
• [Flights] Highlight the search criteria on the results page.
• [Flights] Clarify the information on the details of the flight on the results page.
• [Hotels] Highlight the Filter feature on the results page.
• [Hotels] Prioritize the “Number of persons” field in the search criteria
• [Hotels] Harmonize the prices information.
• [Car hire] Improve the search criteria (write what can be typed in the location search bar, and update the propositions in the location search bar, update the car categories).
• [Car Hire] Clarify the results page : show the car instead of the agencies first, and add sort buttons on the top.

You can try the prototype here or look at the screenshots of my mid-fi wireframes below.

Wireframes focusing on the flights pain points

Wireframes focusing on the hotels pain points

Wireframes focusing on the Car Hire pain points

Throughout this process, I really got the challenge of interviewing users. There needs to be the least bias as possible, which can be really tricky because I had my own point of view of the website since I did my own evaluation. That’s when being empathic is crucial.

Furthermore, You need to be really careful about weak signals that the users can send. Indeed, sometimes users will just allude to something. When I came back on what they said and asked more questions I had fascinating answers that the users didn’t think would be relevant !

Thanks a lot for reading me and for your feedbacks :)

Cheers,

Mathilde