USABILITY ANALYSIS// skyscanner redesign

User type

Young Couple. Both in their 20’s. Regular travelers who loved to discover new places. Peru is the next destination. Although they like to organize in advance their trips, they also love to feel free while traveling. The adventure of not knowing what’s coming next, the adrenaline of spontaneity. That’s why they usually bring a camping tent with them, so they can sleep in the middle of nowhere without any problem. This time they are looking foward to visiting Machu Pichu and they are thinking of renting a car or a motornike to move around the country more easily.

Research

• Aiport:

There are a few options here. Closest airport to Machu Pichu is in Cuzco. It’s only 76 km away. Althought this aiport is quite small and not well served as the one in Lima, the capital of the country.

In Lima, Jorge Chavez International Aiport, 503km away from Machu Picchu. It is the best option, also if they want to rent a car on their arrival.

• Currency:

Sol is the currency. 1 euro is 4,25 soles

• Medical needs:

Some vaccines are recommended or required for Peru; Yellow fever, Typhoid, hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and Rabies.

• Days to spend in the country:

They would like to stay as long as possible in the country, at least two weeks. The biggest expense is going to be the airplane ticket and the first week of accommodation in Lima which they are going to book in advance.

Benchmarking

Based on the Usability Heuristics evaluation with Nielsen’s Principles and thinking on the user types needs, I had to choose between Kayak, Tripadvisor and Skyscanner

Tripadvisor had too much information; tours, restaurants, opinions. It can overload the user.

Kayak and Skyscanner were quite similar, both very intuitive and understandable design, but Skyscanner has no distracting information. It’s simple and It was the one that fits better with the user type and the task.

I finally choose Skyscanner.

Testing

I have interviewed 3 users similar to the user type.

After the 5 second test, every user knew that it was a travel app, where to book a flight, a hotel and a car. Only one of them recognized that it was Skyscanner app. There is no logo on the main page. None of them have used the app before, but they have all used Skyscanner web before.

The task was to find a cheap flight to Lima, accommodation for two weeks and a car to rent.

Insights

These are the pain points that were found after testing the app with the users.

• A search bar on the home screen is missing:

You need to select something before writing the place you are going to travel. Most of the people use Skyscanner to look up for up flights, so it could be featured above the accommodation and car rental.

• Flexible dates:

There is no easy option to look for a cheaper flight the day before the one selected or the day after. During the test, a user remembered that in Skyscanner website, there is this option and you can see on a calendar, the cheapest price on each day, in the whole month.

• Hotel Filters:

When you are looking for a flight, filters are shown on the top right. But when you are looking for a hotel, the filters are placed on the bottom and it is not easy to see them at first sight. It is also confusing because of the white color.

• Greener Choice flights:

Despite this information could be relevant, it is not essential to show that information on every flight. At the end of the day, no one is going to choose a flight because it’s less polluting. It’s also featured in a different color than the rest of the information. In the filters, if you scroll down, you can also choose to see “Greener choice flights” only.

• Poor hotel search engine:

You can only get a hotel with Booking.com, it is the only option that you can find through Skyscanner to find a hotel. It also happens when renting a car, you are directed to Hertz.

Skyscanner Redesign

Now it’s time to redesign Skyscanner according to information that I have found after testing the app with the users. I am going to purpose solutions focusing on the main pain points: missing search bar, flexible dates, and greener choice flights.

Users pointed that it was missing a search bar on the home screen, the experience would be faster if you could write your destination straight away and look for a flight by default, as this is the most searched option

There is another thing that seems to be a little useless. The Prize predictions, it is actually not working properly due to the coronavirus situation, so a search bar could be placed there instead.

After the 5 second test, users had difficulty recognizing which app was. There is no Skyscanner logo. I don’t understand why this happens and from my point of view, “Plan a trip” looks a bit childish.

The photo on the right shows the redesign home screen.

Another important pain point found was the lack of choice to display the flight search results, neither the day after nor the day before, from the date selected at first.

Definitely, the best way to solve this problem would be to add the option “Show whole month” in the upper left side of the screen. As you can see in the next pictures, on the calendar is much easier to look up when are the best prices.

The last problem is related to Greener Choice Flights.

It is very popular nowadays to be eco friendly, even companies want to appear interested in the subject when they probably don’t really care that much

Actually, when someone is looking for a flight, would they choose one flight over another for ecological reasons? Of course not, prices and dates, that’s all that matters when you are looking for a flight. So, is it really necessary to highlight in that radical way every Greener Choice Flight? It seems to be more a marketing campaign than a design decision, therefore it makes no sense from an usability point of view.

The changes I propose are in the picture on the right. You can still see which flights are Green Choice and the information can be understood more clearly.

There is also an option to filter the flights, “Greener Choice Flights only”. It is hidden, you need to scroll down until the end, 4 complete screens in total. If we place it at the beginning, we could make it more visible in green and also allow to user to get more info in this button, instead of where it was located on each flight

After pressing “More Info” button, there is a lot of information. In the following pictures, you can see the users flow. At this moment, there are at least 10 buttons in every search flight search. Skyscanner is really interested in the user knowing that you can travel with a conscience, but why? Would you choose a more expensive flight because it is less polluting?

It looks like a business philosophy. If they were really interested in saving our environment, they would offer a 50% discount on Greener Choice Flights. What do you think about it?

I wonder if a company strategy is more important than the usability decision. Usability contributes directly to how a user feels about your app, I would put it first.

What did I learn from this challenge?

This was by far the most difficult Challenge from the pre-work. I am just a beginner, so I had to admit that It has been difficult for me to follow the steps sometimes, but I keep on going until here, hoping that in the Bootcamp I will be able to learn how to do this process in a better way. I am aware that there are some mistakes and I would love to find out more about some doubts I have after doing this challenge.

I have also learned the importance of doing tests and listening to the smallest details. Sometimes it is not easy to express or understand why an app does not work the way you expect.

I also have difficulty distancing myself from feeling that my opinion is probably the same as the rest. I have to remember that I am not the user.