Case Study: On the Beach UX recommendations
Application Selection and Justification: “On the Beach”
On the Beach is an online travel agency that allows users to book flights and hotels to various destinations. This report will be looking at the website hosted application for android and their primary service functionality of “Holiday Finder” but primarily “Hotel Finder”. These services are facilitated through website forms with platform specific input fields for users to specify travel destinations and travel details such as dates, party size, party members and flexibility.
The reason for choosing this application is due to inconsistent presentation when compared to industry standards of design following Nielsen's and gestalts principles and when compared to “On the beach’s” design precedent within the application. The current implementation leaves room for improvement as shown by their mixed reviews and results of usability testing of the provided services.
From initial impressions and traversal there are many issues that are presented, which stand out as pain points resulting in confusion and frustration when attempting to perform simple tasks for which the application is designed. These showcase opportunities for improvement that can be resolved through further optimisation.
Understanding User Needs:
To better understand the issues with the search functionality, we can design and implement a standard use case that can be presented as a user scenario to extrapolate problems based on a idealistic goals and needs. To create a realistic user scenario, understanding why a user would use the application is a good starting point in addition to analysing real user data in the form of reviews.
Heuristic Evaluation:
Personal usage and an in-depth review of the application features presented multiple issues with the current iteration. The following screen shots and documentation will highlight and explain the current issues found on the application.
First Issue:
The first issue found with the application is the challenging presentation and design choices. While having the relevant fields immediately presentable is good, the screen lacks visual fidelity having 4 shades of blue and different fonts. Inconsistency adds to the distraction and the hotel finder function is hard to distinguish, alongside the intrusive pop ups.
Second Issue:
Inconsistency in form design when selecting the Hotel only option. Being integrated on the same page as the holiday finder, the assumption can be made that the fields would remain as they are with the changed input criteria. However, the entire screen is changed including the location and the display for the fields. An aggressive pop up also immerged blocking the field initially.
User Reviews:
When looking at the user reviews it is important to ensure that the issues are founded, and they are specifically targeted at design choices rather than issues with the technical service of the application. The two reviews highlighted below give us first hand user accounts and issues with user experience.
User Persona:
The created user persona is designed to understand a user’s needs and expectations of using the provided service and provide a framework to base on the usability testing.
User Goal:
These initial observations in addition to understanding the applications purpose, demographic and stand use case; we can create a realistic user journey and user goal to guide our research further and explore the specific areas causing user frustration.
The user goals for this service would be to book either a holiday or hotel. Deeper research into the company and comparison of their competition suggests a USP for users to find cheap accommodation with the primary demographic falling into young to middle aged families finding accommodation abroad.
From this we can create a respective user scenario by first understanding a problem the service is designed to solve. For this use case a common issue would be finding lodging in a location the user may be unfamiliar with. For the primary users, a young couple wanting to find reasonably priced accommodation fits the demographic. Important characteristics to keep in mind would be the variability of party likely constituting a young family including infants and children.
Usability Testing:
From the respective user goal and persona, a testing scenario of the highlighted problem areas can be created to better understand these issues and develop solutions that highlight the pain points and improve usability. Arranging a small testing group to carry out a series of scenario-based tasks followed up by relevant questioning will give a greater depth of insight and both qualitative and quantitative data to build solutions from. The testing will be carried out in two one-on-one sessions with the volunteers’ phones being recorded for later analysis.
Task Selection:
First Task: Acclimatise yourself with the application and navigate to the hotel booking section.
Second Task: Complete the booking input field for a location and time frame of your choosing. Include a variable party size to further test customisation.
Third task: Change your selected choices to test the ease of use in the event of an error is selection.
Interview Questions:
Question 1: “What was your initial impression of the application and how intuitive did you find the experience?”
Question 2: “How easily were you able to interface with the input fields and what aspects did you find easy or challenging?”
Question 3: “From the testing, what recommendations would you have to make this experience easier in the future?”
Results from the user testing:
After conducting the testing and questioning, the data was compiled and analysed to pinpoint the biggest issues that impacted user experience and task progression. Many of the initial issues listed were found by the testers confirming the first impressions; In addition, many other problems were found which helped formulate a series of pain points that target key areas of design for improvement. The pain points have been broken down into the following categories.
Summary of testing data:
First Task:
Participants noted an “abundance of colours and felt hectic” and didn’t feel clean. They located the hotel booking function with relative but not immediate ease.
Second Task:
Participants found multiple issues while conducting this task such as “not liking the page transition”, “obstructed by pop ups, “issues with the input fields” and “lost input fields when changing data”. The average time to complete was 1 minute 46 seconds.
Third Task:
Participants found the third task simpler suggesting the system had some learnability, though found issues such as “having the return date would be a lot easier” and “data updated despite confirmation”. The average completion time was 1 minute 11 seconds.
Qualitative Feedback:
Additional feedback from the post testing questions were “Intuitively I was confused and overwhelmed”, “had to input data twice” and “It was not obvious what rooms were available”.
Pain Point Presentation:
To improve upon issues found with presentation a focus on more minimalism and consistency would improve up readability and initial impressions. Having a more apparent flow of progression with clearer call to actions would help mitigate this pain point.
Pain Point Navigation and CTA’s:
Issues found with navigation and CTA stemmed from the use of multiple pages for both the “Holiday Finder” and the “Hotel Finder”. In addition to this the contrast against other page elements limited the intuitiveness of the system.
Pain Point user input and verification:
The problem with the input and choice verification was the implementation of many redundant features and drawn-out processes of some systems. The error handling had a delayed response that caused some user frustration as found in the testing.
User Flow Diagram:
The following user flow explores both a user’s happy path and unhappy path with the newly designed input system.
Summary of findings:
With the findings found in this case study, the results and analysis of should help stimulate innovation and give a greater understanding into how the existing application leaves room for improvements for a more functional website and a simpler and less frustrating experience for users. The low fidelity work should provide a foundation for a mid-fidelity prototype as well as stimulating new ideas to improve upon.
Thank you kindly for reading my report.
