TripAdvisor: Usability and Redesign
Though traveling right now is something we can only do in our daydreams. That doesn’t mean we can’t find a way to optimize the tools for travel once we can finally plan our vacations.
In this case study, I will be evaluating three travel and booking apps, of which, one will be chosen in order to assess any possible pain points and create a better flow to the UX of the app.
Scenario & User Type
You are planning a visit to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in order to have beautiful beach holiday and to visit one of the Seven Wonders of the world: Christ the Redeemer. It will be you and three of your closest friends, and you’ll be saving up for the trip because it will be a year from now. Since you’ll be saving quite a bit of money you can offered to splurge on a good hotel location with plenty of amenities to treat yourself. No need for any major vaccinations or medical precautions, and you can pack pretty light since you’ll mostly be wearing a swimsuit.
So now the question is: What app works best to plan my trip?
Benchmarking: Kayak, TripAdvisor, or SkyScanner?
To asses which app provides the best features in order to plan your trip, I’ve narrowed down the criteria as follows:
- Can you book flights?
- Can you book a hotel stay?
- Are there transportation options?
- Can you find entertainment options and activities?
- Are there any Maps or Guides?
- Is there a way to put my bookings together and organize them?
After going through each app, I found that TripAdvisor checked the most boxes and offered even more than what I was looking for.
Research & Tests
For my research, I tested and interviewed 3 participants between the ages of 20 to 40 y/o and gave them the same tasks to identify any common pain points.
Booking goals:
- Search a flight from MIA (Miami) to SBGL (Rio), and see if you can filter my how long the flight can be.
- Search for hotel based on best location and amenities. Are there any room options, or specific amenities to choose form.
- Find travel/ tours to Christ The Redeemer as well as other attractions to do in the city.
- Locate any features that may help plan this trip; i.e a guide, review, or itinerary organizer.
In addition to the tasks above, I also issued a 5 second test as blind introduction to the app. This helped to see if there are any obstructions to the UX from just having a glimpse of the app.
Insight
Based on my data collection from the 3 participants I found that on a couple of different instance they all had overlapping pain points.
All 3 participants noted that, right off the bat, the app would be used for travel, but did not initially notice that there were options to book flights or hotels. As they performed the aforementioned tasks, all of the participants found it difficult to locate the filter and map options when booking the hotel. No pain points were found when booking flights, booking transportation/ excursions, or trip assistance options.
Of that data I found that the best way to address the main issues were:
- Declutter the homepage, in order to better showcase the booking buttons.
- Relocate the filter/ map button on the hotel booking page; making it easier to find.
Redesign
With my pain points found I created some mid-fidelity and high fidelity wireframes to illustrate the redesign.
Final Thoughts
Brining a critical and methodic approach to a well established app, gave me great perspective, in that not every product out there is perfect. I’m sure this app was curated and tested many times before it was sent out for use. However, obstructions were still found and the app still had space for improvement. It shows that you should strive for perfection, but still expect critique and criticism in the work you put out.
Though I found the prompt a bit more intimidating then the previous challenges, it felt the most rewarding. This helped to cover most of my learnings so far and has truly fortified the knowledge of have gained thus far.
