Challenge Number 3- Redesign Tripadvisor

I guess we all love being on vacation and nothing is that exciting as planning a nice trip to a place of your dreams. Usually it takes time to plan a trip as several factors have to be compared and everyone has their own priorities when travelling.

This challenge is about redesigning an application and making it as comfortable as possible for users. My personal goal for this task is simplicity, to make a search for the perfect journey as beautiful and easy as possible using an app.

User Type

The target group for which I am working on this challenge are couples aged 20–40 who are looking for a special holiday next year. For the people I interviewed it is most important to find a cheap flight as well as a nice apartment or hotel on which they are more willing to spend money. I think that Tripadvisor has best covered this kind of needs, which is why I have focused on this app.

Photo by Link Hoang on Unsplash

Benchmarking

Here are the most important evaluation points according to Jakob Nielson’s Heuristic:

• The loading status is displayed on the screen, but its a very slow process and it does not seem user friendly
• The languange is sturctured and very formal. It is clear enough to know how to handle this app
• You can simply swipe back in situations of emergency or use the filter function
• Tripadvisor has a consistent design and has a standardised way of displaying and mark the offers
• If you enter a location incorrectly, the app shows “no result”. It also protects you from mistakes like entering the wrong date
• The data is always transferred and visible even if you switch from the flight category to the hotel category
• The searches are saved and are always available in the search field. However, for the inexperienced user, the application could be confusing
• A lot of information is displayed, but these are necessary data to inform the user. Unnecessary information is not displayed. But the screen may look overloaded by many options
• If you enter a location incorrectly, the app shows “no result”. It also protects you from mistakes like entering the wrong date. It’s shown clearly
• There is a help/Search function

Testing

1. What did the test person see? -> A site where you can book trips and adventures
2. What can this tool do for you? -> Book Trips
3. Where would you search for a flight? -> In the first line or in the center of the site

Tasks

1. What kind of budget do they have? -> 1000 Eur and they would prefer to book a holiday for at least two weeks
2. How many and what kind of housing do they need? -> An Apartment
3. How would they move around? -> Car
4. Do they have any time restrictions or schedule is flexible? -> They are flexible

Insight

1. All three users have seen this application for the first time and all three had a problem in the first few seconds to understand exactly how to search for a journey. So the first problem was the layout of the first page, which was overloaded with different symbols and texts.

See the redesign on the right side

2. The second problem is that it is not clear whether the page is loading or not, which gives the user the feeling of uncertainty.

3. The site also looks very overloaded with information and symbols, which makes it difficult for users to understand

See the redesign on the right side

4. The filter function is lost on this page, so this has to be placed differently and more clearly.

See the redesign on the right side

5. The users also found it very stressful to open and close the filters individually

See the redesign on the right side

Conclusion

It is so important to work with people and see how they use an app and what they fail to find improvements. Furthermore, the process of optimising an app is a wonderful way to activate your creativity and analyse which solution might be the simplest for the user.