Ironhack’s Prework — Challenge3
Tripadvisor — UX Case Study
Welcome back for the third challenge with Ironhack. Today, I’ll share with you my first case study. For this challenge, the brief was to jump into the shoes of a world traveler and pick one of the seven world wonders to go explore. I decided that my users would go visit Chichen Itza, a Mayan city built before the Colombian period, in Mexico. So, make your backpack to enter with me into the Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign world.
OVERVIEW
Nowadays, Travelling around the world has become part of our daily lives. It is easier than before and we have a lot of wonderful possibilities and facilities when it comes to travel. However, when we want to organize a special and important trip, as going to visit one of the seven wonders of the world, it requires preparation and organization in order to get the most out of the trip.
USER TYPE
For the challenge, I had to pick a specific user type to have a specific scenario in mind in order to start. I then decided to create a user persona to have always in mind who are my users and create a better solution to their problems.
María and Juan are a young couple from Madrid. They both like traveling and this year, they decided to save enough money to organize a memorable trip together. Some friends recommended them to go to Mexico and to visit Chichen Itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. They liked the idea and after seeing some pictures of the beautiful beaches of Riviera Maya, they were convinced that it was the best destination to spend quality time together and celebrate their love. With a budget of 4000€ and a 20 day holidays to spend, they could begin organizing their trip. María and Juan love having everything prepared!
RESEARCH
Once the destination was chosen and I had my user persona in mind, I started to make some specific researches to prepare my usability evaluation and my interviews. As my travelers, I looked on google for some information about my destination. A lot of blogs, youtube videos, and internet websites give you pieces of information and opinions of people to organize better your trip. After having information such as:
- Nearest airport: Cancún International Airport
- Currency and exchange from your own currency: Mexican pesos $ (1€ = 25,83$)
- Visa: No visa for Europeans citizens, just a valid passport and a round-trip ticket
- Medical needs: Hepatitis A, typhoid fever, rabies, and tetanus + having an insurance
- Wardrobe recommendations: Hiking shoes and rain gear
- Days needed: from 2 to 3 weeks to enjoy the most of the region
I could start analyzing 4 applications: Kayak, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, and Hopper, having in mind the 10 Usability Heuristics from Jakob Nielsen. After testing these applications, I decided to work with Tripadvisor. I chose this app because it is the most complete for my users to organize their trip. Indeed, they not only needed an app to compare the flights, to find the best hotel or to hire a car, they also wanted to have access to excursions and activities.
USABILITY TESTING
After having all that information in mind, I picked 3 profiles that matched my user type and I conducted interviews.
TASK 1: I first did a 5-second test to analyze the “look and feel” of the app.
This exercise is very interesting because we can see the first impression of the user and the way they’ll be interacting with the app. It also allows me to find my first pain point. Indeed, the first impressions of my users were not so good, because they all found that the home screen shows them too much information and they were a bit distracted.
TASK 2: I asked my users to book a round-trip flight from Madrid to Cancún for 20 days in the period of their choice.
TASK 3: For the third task, users were asked to book a nice hotel in Cancún to spend holidays together as a couple.
TASK 4: I asked them to book an excursion to go visiting Chichen Itza during their trip.
PAIN POINTS
Conducting those interviews really allows me to find pain points. The process of analyzing all the clicks users make on the screen is so useful. We are all different, but if the app is not clear enough, the flow is not perfect and we can feel their frustration. I decided to focus on these 3 main problems:
PROBLEM 1: During the 5-second test, I found my first pain point: the home screen is too busy and users can’t really focus on their tasks.
PROBLEM 2: When establishing the days for the flight, users has no option to see the best days to pick in order to have the best price.
PROBLEM 3: When users want to book an excursion to Chichen Itza, the process of booking is not clear at all. They have to scroll a lot on the screen because they receive too much information and they have a lot of advertisements to other excursions and that doesn’t give them the impression they are booking the best tour.
WIREFRAMES
With that three problems in mind, I started doing a paper prototype to find how it could be solved. This part wasn’t easy, but was essential. I started to find solutions and alternatives to that pain points. Making user flow smooth was my objective. Thanks to my paper prototype, I started doing my mid-fi prototypes in Figma.
SOLUTION 1
SOLUTION 2
SOLUTION 3
CONCLUSIONS
This exercise was completely challenging. I had to deal with many new concepts and finding pain points and redesigning them was not easy, but I enjoyed the process which is the most important. Also, the TripAdvisor App is very complex because it gives a lot of info to users, and organizing all that info must be such a big challenge.
I hope you enjoyed it and see you soon for another challenge!
