How-to-Holiday during COVID — Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign of Skyscanner
A great way to practice putting all UX and UI tools to use is by redesigning existing apps and websites. For the Ironhack Usability Challenge I conducted User Research for a travel booking app and redesigned an app that better fulfilled the needs of the Persona I created. I settled on the Skyscanner app for a young couple who wants to travel to Stockholm, Sweden this summer.
USER RESEARCH
In order to conduct User Research, I followed this schema:
- Choose a User type (from the Ironhack list) and create a Persona for them
- Research the destination they are interested in traveling to
- Conduct a Usability Heuristics evaluation and benchmark several travel apps
- Choose the one which performs best for my user type
- Design the task for my user type and outline the goals
- Discover and document the main pain points by testing users
- Wireframe the redesign
USER TYPE and PERSONA
My persona is a young couple in their early 30's.
Dani and Andrei decide to go to Sweden again this summer. Since the last year they realize they have both saved enough for the tickets and are planning to save as much as possible for the next few months to do this trip. They want to be efficient and have everything they need organized to enjoy their time to the fullest while there. They want to have special moments to celebrate being together after making it through a year of restrictions due to COVID.
DESTINATION
Stockholm with side trip to Herräng
- Stockholm is one of the coolest, prettiest (and most expensive) places to visit.
- Built on 14 islands, Stockholm is widely considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful capitals. From medieval buildings and lush green parks to modern skyscrapers and colorful ‘funkis’ buildings, each district has a unique character.
- Getting there: Stockholm is served by 4 airports, but not all of them are near the city — Arlanda, Bromma, Skavsta, and Västerås Airport. Arlanda is the closest to the city, and then Bromma, with Västerås and Skavsta being the farthest away. However, they are all accessible with decent transit links into the city.
- Getting around: Stockholm is very pedestrian friendly. It also has a very good public transportation system that can get you most anywhere you want to be. You can use the SL card (And top up by app or machine) to ride the bus, train/underground, and even the ferry.
- Good to know: Coming from a city where cash is preferred can be a shock, as Stockholm mainly uses card. Some places are cash-free, so just check your credit card/cash card to make sure you can use it in Sweden, ideally for free with a decent exchange rate. No need to withdraw cash at the airport or change money.
- Before you go: Sweden is part of Schengen, so if your passport/visa allows you to visit Schengen, then you are set. Although Sweden never had a lockdown situation, a negative COVID test is required regardless 48hrs prior to departure and the document must be in Swedish, English, Norwegian, or Danish. This does not apply to Swedish nationals and residents. Travelers must self-isolate for 7 days after arrival and be tested immediately after arrival, and again 5 days later.
- Wardrobe recommendations: Stockholm is quite warm during the summer, in the mid 20’s -30C. It is moderately humid thanks to being surrounded by water. Taking a dip in one of the many lakes is always an enjoyable experience.
- Recommended time spent: Stockholm is a characterful city full of scenic hikes, breath-taking views, world heritage sites, over 100 museums, and plenty more. It’s easily walkable with a welcoming atmosphere and new things to see and do are popping up all the time. In the summer the days are very long and there is always a hint of light even at night. Aside from accounting for self-isolation, two weeks is typically enough to explore Stockholm and take a couple days trip to Herräng for some rural quiet time.
BENCHMARKING — USABILITY HEURISTICS EVALUATION
Before settling on Skyscanner, I compared several apps against each other — KAYAK, Skyscanner, Hopper, TripAdvisor , and Omio (formerly GoEuro).
After examining the different apps with the 5 second test and attempting to book the same trip with each app, I had the following impressions for each:
- Hopper — Least versatile in terms of allowing users to multitask with their planning when they have a budget and other constraints. It is designed more for pushing the customer to make the purchase and impulse buy. Could be useful for corporate travel purchases where the buyer doesn’t want to get distracted with options and budget is less of an issue.
- Omio — Versatile app focusing on the travel aspect, allowing the user to consider and combine different travel options (trains, buses, flights, rideshare). No option to book accommodation, rental car, or activities.
- Kayak — Very versatile and allows the user to plan and search for their trip in a variety of ways. Very clear from the homescreen what the app can offer (flights, hotel, car rental, getaway inspiration). Has a feeling of transparency by the way the info is organized.
- Skyscanner — Also very versatile, and focuses first on helping travellers know what COVID restrictions are before even looking up a flight, so they can see which countries at a glance might be easier to travel to, and know how much extra time to incorporate into their trip for quarantine/self-isolation.
- TripAdvisor — Great for helping plan activities during the vacation, but not designed to help with actual travel there and back.
I then interviewed 4 users and asked them to focus on booking a trip for this summer from Berlin to Stockholm as per my User Persona. I chose Skyscanner because I felt that it offered the greatest amount of searchable information and also felt conscientious with the COVID info on its homescreen in an unobtrusive and elegant way. I also wanted to see if anyone would attempt to look at accommodation options or trip inspiration.
INSIGHTS
Overall, the users found it straightforward to use and were able to enter the dates and location and pull up some flights.
Feedback:
- Some of them who primarily use Kayak wished for the ‘recent searches’ option so that they could pick a different set of dates and revisit it. It was not immediately obvious that Stockholm has 4 airports. Nice that the search function knows about the dates already when transitioning to the ‘search hotels’ function. Great that one could see the lowest price estimates for different dates right on the calendar. Entry fields felt a little small. Higher chance of incorrect clicks. Wish to ‘save’ or ‘like several trips straight from the search results so they could be compared. The existence of this last feature is also inconsistent across selected options and it is not immediately obvious why.
I also asked the users to try first looking up the COVID restrictions and then attempting to search for the trip.
- It is a bit buggy — typing in Berlin-Stockholm resulted in a trip from Leipzig instead of Berlin. The search function does not have a dropdown that clearly shows which airports serve Stockholm, and rather the names appear as separate options and is obscured by the keyboard. STO is for all airports whereas ARN is specifically for Arlanda, closest to Stockholm.
THE REDESIGN
I decided to focus on the issue of Search History not being easily available without signing in as a registered user. I also added the bonus of the Dropdown Menu looking different so that it was more obvious that there was more than one airport near Stockholm and made the search fields a little bigger at the start (the still become minimized when search results are displayed).
Using lo- and mid-fi wireframes I redesigned several of the following screens:
What do you think? Do you find it a bit more intuitive? Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments!
CLOSING NOTES
I found it much easier this time around to create the Mid-fi wireframes in Figma, and keep my work organized so that I could move individual sections around and reformat icons. I would love to finish creating more screens and a functional prototype for Skyscanner and Omio in the near future, as one dream was to work for Omio in some capacity — perhaps a designer goal is not so farfetched. I liked that this exercise gave me the opportunity to see how the future of travel looks like and rethink the approach to travel now after the pandemic, and was comprehensive in requiring me to take the project from User Persona development all the way to wireframing and prototyping.
