UX-BudgetTravel
Phase III: Prototypes and User Testing
Introduction
Budget Travel aims to make a simple and efficient road trip planning process for users by providing an understandable interface that helps walk them through the process. Through Budget Travel, users can arrange road trips, plan stops during their road trips, hotel accommodations, book flights, and plan activities within one platform. The creation and design of our prototypes are based on the wireframes that we created to provide users with a comprehensive visualization of the application’s layout and functionality, offering a preview of the user experience before the final product is accessible, thus enhancing their comprehension of its functionality.
Methods
Pilot Test
Protocol
Background Information
What websites did you use to plan out your trip?
- This question was meant to get a better understanding of who Budget Travel’s top competitors are.
- It also helps to see how involved the participants like to be when planning a trip.
What were your priorities?
- This question was posed to see what is most important to participants when they are planning a trip.
- The responses to this question will help the UX team understand what features may be useful to users
What were some things you liked during your trip planning process?
- The responses to this question will be useful for determining how to make a satisfying and memorable experience for Budget Travel’s users.
What were some frustrations you had with the process?
- This question is to see what part of the trip planning process is the most frustrating for participants.
- This will help the UX team find ways to improve the user’s experience and know what should be avoided.
Debrief Questions
Overall, what did you like most about [Budget Travel]?
- This question aims to find out what participants liked the most about Budget Travel.
- This can help the UX team make Budget Travel memorable and attract more users.
What did you dislike the most about it?
- This question is to get suggestions on how Budget Travel can be improved.
- Ideally, participants will answer honestly and give feedback on which tasks they struggled with, or features they found hard to use.
Are there any additional features you would like for it to have?
- This will help the UX team have a better understanding of possible users and their needs
- This is where participants can give suggestions on how Budget Travel can be improved
Did you see some new features that were very helpful?
- This question is posed to users to see what feature stood out the most to them
- The responses to this question can help the UX team understand what features should be the “main focus” or “selling point” of Budget Travel
- I.e something that helps the app stand out amongst competitors
Any other comments or thoughts?
- This is where participants can voice their thoughts or any lingering questions
- Perhaps the participants have something to say that was not covered by the previous questions
Usability Testing:
Our Usability test or main objectives were to make Budget Travel users have a memorable experience that differs from other vacation planning websites. Our usability testing was designed to focus on our user interaction, preferences, and expectations. By understanding the needs of our diverse user base, encompassing individuals with varied budget constraints, travel experiences, technological proficiency, and distinct travel motivations, we sought to enhance the user journey through Budget Travel’s interface. We decided to focus on some specific screening.
Screening
People who are a good fit:
- People who have a strict budget
- People who have no budget, but would like to save money
- People who are 18+ years old
- People who have never gone on vacation
- People who travel day to day for business work looking for cheap travel prices
- People who have gone on multiple vacations (experienced travelers)
- People who want to keep track of the flights, hotel stays, and activities they have gone to as well as their ratings (public or private)
- People who want suggestions on what activities they could do and what’s going on during their stay I.e. concerts, park festivals/events, etc.
- People who don’t use technology often
- If budget travel is simple enough for them to understand, then others who are more versed with technology will likely have an easier time understanding what to do
We also decided to use the Think-aloud protocol in our Unit testing to provide us a better guidance on what the user is thinking and how they move through the application to be able to figure out where they struggle to move to the next step that causes them not to finish the tasks.
- Think-aloud protocol
- By having a user verbally go through the steps they take, they may give information that they wouldn’t otherwise think about
- Such as their expectations
- What they are looking for (“I want to find the filter button”)
- Their reasonings (“I want to edit my trip, so I’m going to my profile to see my recent history.”)
Prototypes:
*LINK to Interactive Prototype
Our Protocol was created to follow 3 different tasks. We made our prototypes to be interactive to allow the user to click and imagine what they were using for the finished product. For the usability test, we also asked the participants to “Think Aloud” to give us an idea of what they are thinking when interacting with the prototype and where they get confused or stuck.
Task 1
We would like you to imagine you already have an account created with us so you log in to your account. Your family wants to plan a road trip to Disneyland Adventure in Los Angeles. So you create a new Road Trip To Disney and you have a certain amount of money saved for the trip but on your drive there you want to make some stops to rest, eat, and visit. After you add your budget and you finished make sure you save all of your Road Trip information. Remember to speak out loud and walk me through how you would create that new trip to Disneyland with your family with a certain budget and how you choose your selected stops.
For Task 1 what we were looking for was to see how the user moved through the application to be able to complete and create a new Road Trip add a Budget, add a final destination, and be able to add certain stops to their Road Trip.
Task 2
We would like you to now go into the saved trips you have in your account you want to change the number of people that are going and you also want to change the budget after adding more people. You also want to change your destination by choosing a different endpoint and then change or keep your same stops. We would also like you to speak out loud and walk me through the ways you move through the prototype to accomplish the task.
For Task 2 we wanted to see the user use the editing tools where they could change any saved trip whether it’s changing their Budget, trip title, people traveling, end destination, and stops.
Task 3
We would like you to log out of your account and act like you forgot your password. Speak out loud and walk me through the ways you move through the prototype to accomplish the task.
For Task 3 we wanted to see the users interact with the forgot password function to see how they might struggle if they were ever needed to recover their account when they forgot their password.
Findings
We asked the participants a few questions about their traveling tendencies, and we learned that some of them like to plan trips based on their budgets and specific activities. Additionally, some expressed that planning a trip can be tedious due to bookings for flights/hotels/etc being on different websites, thereby creating confusion and problems such as schedules/dates not aligning properly. As we concluded the usability tests, we asked a few closing questions. Participants were asked about their experience with Budget Travel and its various features. We learned the following:
Likes: A few participants expressed an interest in the recommended “Stops” along the way to their destination, as well as the map that allows the user to get a visual understanding of the distance from their stops to their final destination.
Dislikes: Some participants recommended that editing a Road Trip should have an option to change specific parts of the trip. Participants expressed that having to click through the different options to get to the one they want to change is inefficient.
After running the Usability Tests we got feedback from (n = 6) participants with a rating of how difficult each task was 1 being difficult and 5 being easy. When gathering all of the ratings given by each participant we were able to insert them into a graph that allowed us to see the ratings from each participant for all of the 3 tasks with all of the participants giving them a rating of 5. We were happy with our results being able to see that all of the participants didn’t struggle in a single task and were satisfied with the prototype.
Conclusions
We found that many of our pilot testers said that our design was straightforward and followed traditional layouts making it very learnable and effective. In conclusion, after running the usability tests and having our participants complete our protocol and interact with our prototype we were able to find out that our prototype is learnable and effective for those who have had experience with technology. We were able to get feedback on where we could improve our application to be able to achieve the participant’s needs. It is recommended that we find users who are more diverse in background rather than strictly usability engineering Chico State students.
Caveats
Our limitations would be that we do not have a variety of demographics due to the fact that we were doing pilot testing with other students of California State University, Chico within the Usability Engineering class. We believe that everyone in the class had some experience or exposure to electronics or technology making our prototype accessible only to those with those experiences.