For my third assignment in the Ironhack pre-work, I was to some touch ups
on the a traveling app of my choice, with my choice this assignment being: Skyscanner; it is a fairly robust travel app that filters various deals from all available airliners to someone using to reach their destination.
I was to interview three to five people — the objective being conducting a usability evaluation for those users who are considering using the app to plan abroad in the near future; and to make any necessary changes in the design for the elected app to better suit their needs.
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.
The group of folks found it convenient that MIA could offer services, with only a layover to take before continuing their journey to Haneda Airport inside of Tokyo.These group of people have been planning the logistics trip to Japan for well over a year, and have had good chance to settle with the logistical challenges present in finding accommodations inside of Tokyo.
All have budgeted at least $3,000.00 USD which given current conversion rates:
1 USD = 106.95 YEN.
Each person would total up to around: 320,857.50 YEN —
a more than a comfortable amount to experience Tokyo Tower and the inner-city life in Tokyo for the remainder of their stay.
They also managed get inoculated with all the necessary Vaccination which Japan requires before entry: Hepatitis A/B, Rabies, Meningitis, Polio, Measles, Mups, Rubella, Tdap, chickenpox, and so on.
They packed all the necessary fall clothes they would need such as: long pants, long sleeve shirts, and winter/trench coats to protect in case of sudden temperature drop.
All in all, while visiting Tokyo Tower is the group’s main attraction, it would take no more than a few hours to see and experience. Reaching the tower thankfully is only short distance from the hostel, and would take no more than a few minutes on foot to arrive. All the same, the group decided to stay two weeks in Japan to try and experience everything the city has to offer.
The App, Skyscanner, was the most ideal app in mind the group I have chosen to focus on. For the most part, the app had very little pitfalls found by my own preliminary evaluation, and app was easy to read and use, with all primarily booking elements were presented upon having the app land on the home page. It required no email registration to use, and generally non-obtrusive. And while the other options like: Hopper, and Trip Advisor had used used accelerators for their interface — I in the end settled that Skyscanner was best suit the needs of my user group’s itinerary. It required no commitments like Trip Advisor did with its email registration, and generally find the user experience in using it more enjoyable than with Hopper.
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
Here all the language in the page is used plainly, everything means exactly what it says it means. No exotic buzz terms for the user for unnecessary build up of cognitive load for the user in filtering the information presented to him.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
In this calendar page, a user wishing to book across these date can simply swipe his fingers, or alternatively tap their departure dates to select them, instead of having to input everything in manually.
The group had budgeted a minimum amount of $3,000 including the hotel feels, for a total two weeks stay. They are happy to be able to get price estimations immediately from the app before getting a flight. They are however a little disappointed at the lack of consistency in some of the options pertaining the process of booking flight and hotel separately. With some options for certain airliners requiring the person to book the flight at the airline providers page.
The main pressure point that the users experienced were very minimal overall, still, they wished the following: flight/hotel buttons needed to be more noticeable, making the save itinerary button more noticeable, and making the ‘’search for flexible dates button’’ look more like a button.
Per the user’s grievances I modified certain elements from both pages that they had feedback on. I modified some of the interface button to give them more dimensionality, and make it more obvious that certain text elements are interactable such as the ‘’sort’’ and ‘’filter’’ button on the flights page. Among other changes were text centering of other UI elements like the trip options (Roundtrip, One-way, Multi-city) on the top of the departure/destination window. And finally for the calendar page, I modified the very useful but hard to notice flexible dates option to look more like an interactable button, on the bottom of the calendar.
There’s a lot to be gathered from this process. Heuristic evaluations make or break products and user experiences. This exercise taught me just how important it is to separate your own needs, to address wider issues that you may not be privy to.
