Ironhack’s Prework: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign
The purpose of this exercise is to make my very first review — or, in UX terms, Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign — as a UX designer about a touristic webpage.
Among the candidates to be evaluated, there were 4 options on the table: Kayak, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor and Hopper. Nonetheless, our interviewees naturally opted to talk about TripAdvisor. Let’s dive into it a little bit!
Problem/Goal: Evaluate the site of a tourism webpage and improve it
Research: Interview of 4 technologically advanced users
Tools: Recorder, Sketch
Overview
We were given several types of target for this exercise. Due to my personal connections and my social reach, we chose the following one:
From now on, we would consider this target as the user of the platform that we will be evaluating from now on. The goal of this project will be for them to highlight their pain points in the 4 sites we will be presenting them so that we can improve one of them based on their comments and insights. At the last point of this article we will be seeing a mid-fi wireframe of the app that will be resulting from their answers to the interview.
Users and Audience
For this exercise, the target user is a group of young friends — between 20 and 40 years old — planning their holidays in advance. They are trying to be price cautious — which means they are not in the luxury segment — while keeping a little bit of their budget to spoil themselves in a couple of occasions. ç
We tried to find the closest resemblance to our persona in the real world so as to make the more reliable evaluation as possible.
Our interviewees are 4 youngsters between 22 and 24 years old, living in Barcelona, heavy technological users, early majority adopters. They all plan a friends trip at least once in a year and have limited budgets for them.
Ideation
Process
We carried out 4 interviews in which we both asked our users about their travel-planning habits, as well as some knowledge about the sites mentioned above. I found quite interesting that all users have heard about the 4 platforms, but the definition of such sites might be outdated — or only sticked to what advertisements tend to highlight.
- Kayak is understood as a flight searcher.
- Skyscanner is understood as a platform to compare prices and choose the best flight options.
- TripAdvisor is seen as a place where you can make reviews and look for leisure activities.
- Hopper — the least known among our audience — is understood to check flight rates.
This could mean different things like, for instance, that the abovementioned uses are the core businesses of these brands or that the other features tend to be belittled.
75% of our interviewees mentioned that they didn’t have a clue what the website of TripAdvisor was for. If they saw the logo, they would go like “I know the brand, but now I have no idea what they do”. Only 25% of them already knew the website and is, indeed, their main tool for planning trips with their friends. They also highlighted that they didn’t understand the copies on the main screen.
One of the reasons that may explain this is the lack of descriptive illustrations or pictures, or different color areas for the user to understand what can they do in each separate area.
Outcome
For that reason, in our proposal we just suggest a couple of small changes in the design, so as to make the site more understandable at first sight to any kind of user. We also proposed new copies to make the main messages of the website more clarifying to their users. Moreover, we have reduced the number of header options from 7 to 6 — although this is an action that should consider insights from the inside of the company, since it may alter the conversion rate or some internal metrics and, consequently, the company’s profits.
Here you can see the redesign of the homepage that has been suggested.
Moreover, there were another couple of details that our interviewees mentioned. First, in the flights screen, it should be fixed the amount of hours one is traveling overseas, since it doesn’t consider the time zone in the flights.
This is not a design change, but rather a programming one. Nonetheless, it is also important for our users to have all the correct information when they book their trip plans.
Secondly, when navigating the accommodation feature, our users also confessed that once they have clicked one option, they are not interested in knowing the prices on different websites for the same hotel, but rather on knowing more relevant information such as geographical location or a map.
Key Learnings and Next Steps
After this exercise, we have realized that users like using easy and intuitive websites and apps. This is sometimes just a matter of redesigning the site or reducing the number of options that we offer them at the beginning.
Moreover, our interviewees admit that they would trust more a site that, on the one side, they already know, and that, on the other side, gives them different options to choose, to allow them to have some flexibility when choosing.
Additionally, they also confessed using several platforms to check the places they couldn’t miss when traveling (Instagram, Google Maps, local guides,..). This is a feature that Tripadvisor already has and may need to advertise a little bit more to generate trust among young generations.
As well, Tripadvisor could also give more relevance to the rental cars options, instead of hiding it when you have already chosen a destination. This could generate a lot of engagement and direct a lot of traffic to the site.
Lastly, users are increasingly thrilled by the possibility of creating their trip on just one platform and keep adding places to visit, flight details, accommodation details, etc. Therefore, I would highly encourage Tripadvisor to give more visibility to this option — as we did on the redesign of their website, since it could be one of the main hooks for their users.
