Challenge 3: Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign — The Coliseum

For the 3rd pre-work challenge, we’ll be evaluating the usability of a traveling app that will take us to make design suggestions to improve the experience of the user.

But before that, I want you to get into the shoes of a group of 4 friends (20–40 years old) that love to travel. For a long time you’ve wanted to travel the world and visit the Seven Wonders of the Millennium. So next summer you are planning on going to the Coliseum in Rome, Italy.

You want to visit Rome for a week, from the first of March 2022 till the seventh. A week is more than enough for you to enjoy the stay, and seans we all have time to ask for holidays at work, why not enjoy your time there as much as you can.

To travel conveniently you’ve researched for all the information needed. How many days are needed to enjoy the trip, where to stay, if a travel visa is needed and the nearest airport.

Now that we have the information needed we can start with the Challenge.

Using the heuristic evaluation, I evaluated the different option app’s I had and selected the traveling app called “Hopper”. After that, with the help of different people we tested the app.

While doing the interviews and the testing of the app I realized different problems the users had.

• The page that’s shown after selecting the date, wasn’t fully understood due to the “buy it now, pay later” section that made them think that the screen was fixed and not slidable to see all the information it can offer.
• When you select the ticket you have to select if you want extra fees. Instead of being all shown at the same time with the accordion information and select it there. It is shown separately.
• Some of them, while selecting the “From where” and the “Where” they felt confused because they couldn’t find the locations correctly. (The language)
• When you click for extra information it takes you to the web where you can find it, but once you want to go back to the app you are taken to the “Homepage” and you have to select every plane ticket again.

The problems I decided to fix are the first two listed above.

• For the first problem I’d suggest to remark the “buy it now, pay later” section with a darker color. And give a bit of shading on the upper outer side to give the effect of depth. I believe that the user will know there is more information underneath.

On the picture you can see the original screen on the left and on the right the one I quickly edited as an example.

• The best option for the second problem would be to collect all the extra optional fees that the app offers you on one screen instead of different. There you could select the ones you desired and confirm.

The following screen would continue as before.

Conclusions

With this project I learned that sometimes the easiest solution makes it easier to understand, you don’t have to get complicated. And also, some problems found were those that I believe are not mine to fix. With that I mean that for example, the last one listed, it’s not about design, it’s more about finding a way to temporarily keep the tickets, so the client doesn’t have to restart again.