Ironhack UX/UI prework Challenge 3: Skyscanner
Usability Evaluation and Site Redesign
Benchmark of trip planning apps
To decide which app to evaluate and also to gain some knowledge about good practices, I tried and tested the four suggested apps (Kayak, Skyscanner, Tripadvisor and Hopper). Here’s a quick review of positives and negatives points for each of those apps:
Kayak:
The +
- Minimal and efficient
- Visible free cancelation labels (a crucial feature in times of pandemic)
- Includes Siri functionalities
The -
- No amenities or touristic guidance
- Pandemic related info are hard to get and accessible out of the app
- Visual identity is very dry and not very engaging
Skyscanner:
The +
- Clear info of possible destinations during the pandemic
- Close to home suggested destinations
- Greener travel programs that are featured in flight results (lowest CO2 emission travels comes first)
- Good looking flat design illustrations and nice color palette
The -
- No amenities or touristic guidance
Hopper:
The +
- Offers both hotels and rented homes
- Calendar feature with a color code rating in a very clear way highest and lowest price
- Rabbit themed, memorisable and friendly looking visual identity
- Carrot cash fidelity program
- Gamification aspect were you unlock features as you use the app
The -
- No amenities or touristic guidance
- A lot of pop up and user solicitations
- Very limited research filter options
Tripadvisor:
The +
- The “veteran app” with the highest notoriety
- Good “all in one” that includes also featured touristic sites and amenities
- Backed by an active and large community that provides a huge amount of feedback
The -
- Little information related to travel in the pandemic, only a generic page with a few links that sends the user out of the app
- Little information related to travel requirements (visas, vaccinations
- Doesn’t display free cancellation policies for hotels
I decided after this review to dive deeper into Skyscanner for a full app audit and testing. Its landing page with its informative interface related to the pandemic really caught my attention and motivated me the most to look for a possible travel in these difficult times. I felt straight away I was in good caring hands!
User type for testing
The user type testing the app are young couples (20–35 y/o)
It was a fictional booking but since Sckyscanner was so informative that some of the testers were considering doing an actual booking!
The first couple of users are going to book a trip to Japan, a destination they’ve been looking forward to discover for a long time. The second a trip to Costa Rica, and the third couple a trip to the Highlands in Scotland. In every case, we’ve looked at the 3 features: flights, accommodation and car rentals. Since any of them had traveled for a long time, they had in mind to do a memorable trip.
First screen, all of the users loved the dynamic map picturing which travel was possible and under which conditions. This info is difficult to find in other similar apps or on the Web with this much clarity and ease of use.
The flight booking
In every case, it was the first step of the booking. In all of the apps looked at, the general path is: flight > accommodation > local transport
We can notice lots of positive aspects:
- Flights are sorted taking price, convenience and lowest CO2 emission in account.
- The user can immediately tell if the flight is refundable or not, if checked bags are included which are both stress points of travelling by plane.
- An “like” icon suggest that the option can be saved for later
- By scrolling down the users will see an overview of hotels and car rentals for the pre-entered dates.
Some negative aspects:
- A little point of pain was noticed for our young user type who is receptive to environnement responsable: the greener travel label is often hard to find. Sometimes it appears in the results and disappears straight after. It often requires to find a filter activation to find a greener travel option.
- A visible price range when setting up the calendar like in Hopper would be appreciable as it is an important concern for our group of users and would help the decision on the date.
- If the user enters a flight destination, a loading screen is launched with default dates. The will result in giving not relevant result and delaying the search
The hotel booking
The overhall experience is efficient and satisfying. The user gets a lot of info on availability, cancellation policy, popularity through feedback etc.
Going to the hotel tab after picking a flight we can notice that the dates entered earlier for the flights are kept, which is useful. On the other hand you have the same default date problem as with flight research: results are launched straight away after entering destination even if the dates are not entered.
The UI is slightly inconsistent with the flight booking system when it comes to the filters button. In this case they’re positioned at the bottom of the screen and no longer at the top right side. They also disappear when scrolling down on the result which caused confusion for a tested user.
The greener travel was a very seductive feature for the testing user, a comparable label for hotels is an idea that came up during testing. Criterias can be set up and explained the same way they were with flight booking.
It is a feature that the competition doesn’t have and therefore a great way for Skyscanner to stand out.
The hotel rating system is a bit confusing, some display Tripadvisor reviews, some have other review systems and some none at all.
Home rental would have been a great addition as well
Car rental booking
The dates pre entered in the other research are again, still available. A good diversity of vehicle type is available from a selection of different providers. The users noted that seeing a bracket of price between the different types could be interesting. For example, the tested user didn’t know initially that he could afford a more premium vehicle in Costa Rica, since price ranges are very different than the ones in Europe.
In the previously mentioned idea of a greener travel developpement, a zero emission vehicle category would be a great addition.
A recap of the main outlined problems that we’ll be part of the redesign:
- A more consistent UI when it comes to research filters
- More visible prices preview in calendar for flights, hotels or when picking a car category
- Wait for the user to enter his preferred dates to launch the search engine
- Add a home rental category
- Imagine more features to promote greener travel habits
Key things that I learned throughout this process
I really enjoyed watching other people interact with the app, it’s not something you often see as an average user. This experiment made me want to try the same exercise with wider and different groups of users of different types in order to identify universal and specific problems.
This case study was directed at applications of a highly competitive market. The different apps that we compared are already very polished and good at what they do. For that reason, finding optimisations and redefining has been a fun challenge that I definitely couldn’t have done without user testing!
