Challenge 3: Kayak Case Study
Ironhack’s Prework
Welcome to the 3rd Challenge! This time the aim of the challenge is to choose a meta-search app related to travel and analyze the possible usability frictions that the user could experience. Once the friction has been found, I have to find a better solution for that issue. The app that I have chosen to analyze is KAYAK!
1. USER TYPE
Alex and Nina are a young 30 year-old couple that want to travel to Jordan next summer. They have never been there and it is an exciting destination that will help them disconnect and enjoy. They have already saved enough for the tickets and they still have 6 more months to keep saving for their trip.
They want to be efficient and don’t want to miss important things, so they want to keep all aspects of the trip organized. Also, they are young but they want to enjoy and have special moments without having to think about the money all the time.
2. HEURISTIC EVALUATION
After comparing different travel apps with the Heuristic Evaluation, I have decided to work with KAYAK. Skyscanner and TripAdvisor are also good applications, and Skyscanner was also a pretty good choice, but I chose a young couple as my user type, and I think that Kayak should be the selected app. Here is the Heuristic Evaluation that I did before choosing Kayak.
3. TESTING
The test takes no more than 20 minutes. I have done 3 interviews to 3 different users, following this path.
- The 5-second test
I have performed the 5-seconds test with the users. This test consists on asking them to watch the interface screen during 5 seconds and then cover the screen. The reason why we do that is to ask them some first-sight questions about the app.
- What did you see?
- Do you understand the product/service?
- What can this tool do for you?
- Do you feel that you get a benefit from this site?
- Can you remember the name of the company?
- Where would you search for a flight?
2. Tasks
- I have asked the user to book a flight from Barcelona to Amman (Jordan). The user has to book going and return.
- I have asked the user to Book an Hotel in Petra, and the user has to chose the hotel regarding to his preferences.
- Petra is 3h by car from the Airport (which is in Amman), so I also asked the user to rent a car for the whole trip.
4. INSIGHTS
After testing the interface with the 3 users I realized some things. In general the user completed the tasks successfully and understood the interface and how it worked. Almost all of them recognized Kayak in the 5-second test because of the orange color, and one of them thought it was EasyJet. Now the frictions that the users experimented are the following ones:
1 FRICTION. The most obvious friction was the floating filter button located in the bottom of the page. Once the user had to search for the filters, the first place where they looked was on the top of the page, and then they found the general filter search, that was not enough filter for them. Finally, after half a minute they realized that the button was on the bottom. One of the users explained how annoying it was to navigate with floating buttons on the screen.
2 FRICTION. This was a problem for one of the users. The user found himself waiting for the icons to load, he thought that there was a problem but the thing was that the screen had been scrolled a little bit and the icons were in transition between white to colored background and colored to white icons.
3 FRICTION. This friction is more a development problem rather than a usabiliy one, but I think it is interesting to add it on the list.
The problem that I choose to improve is the first one. The floating filter button has given issues to all users, so I will try to find a better way to show the filter section.
5. REDESIGN
Lo-fi
Mid-fi changes
Before seing the final result, I show that main changes that I have done to redesign these both screens.
Mid-fi Wireframess
6. PROTOTYPE
If you want to see the prototype click on the link below!
KEY THINGS
It is curious how an interface can be perfect for a designer eyes and on the other hand for a user can be problematic. Only if you test it with real users with real problems you will be able to improbe a product.
And I have to say, before starting to test with users I was feeling a bit lost, I didn’t thought there was anything to improve but I was wrong, and that is something new that I have learned, even the best products can be improved in one way or another!
