Usability Study on Expedia Website
Hello! It is a usability study report on a travel website. As part of the UX Research course during my masters, I assigned Expedia website for the usability study.
Introduction :
Online travel planning is a growing business nowadays because everyone loves to plan their trips earlier. Planning makes them comfortable while travelling. Expedia travel website is a widely used online platforms that allow users to book their travel planning. They offer service from “commercial flights, cars, and charter flights to hotels and vacation rentals”.
The usability study was conducted on the Expedia travel website as part of my course work on December 12th and 13th in 2019. The purpose of the test was to assess the usability of the web interfaces. The usability test conducted at the user’s location and the test was recorded with the help of screen reading software to capture user behaviors while performing the tasks. Data logging form used to collect data during interviews.
Usability study procedure:
Recruiting Participants
I have recruited my college friends who use online travel websites frequently as my participants. As a test administrator, I sent emails about the background information about the test process and asked them for their availability for the next five days. My friends responded with the appropriate time. Each test session lasted about 60 minutes.
Target population (recruiting criteria):
A. By travel experience:
1. User has bought a ticket online in the past year
2. User hasn’t used Expedia website before.
B. By frequency of online bookings :
1. At least 1–3 trips per year booked through online
Test procedure:
I followed the below procedure to run the test.
1.Pre-test checklist
2. User introduction
3. Consent form
4. Task instructions
5.Post-task questionnaire
6. Post-test questionnaire
I checked the required material needed for every test before starting the test procedure because I do not want to bother my participants during the test process.
The process started with the user introduction to make them comfortable with the Interview process, and the entire evaluation process and reason for this study were explained to them.
Next step in the evaluation process is taking consent from participants about the evolution process. This consent form explains that the participants’ results of the interview will be recorded. So that we can check back with some facts in the case if we miss them in our note-taking process. The recordings will be destroyed after this assignment. Consent Form
After this users asked to perform the following tasks, and I recorded the whole test process with the help of screen recording software(Loom). I asked users to perform Think aloud process while performing tasks. Participants were asked to say whatever comes into their mind as they working on the task. This process helped me to understand what users looking at, thinking, doing, and feeling.
Tasks assigned for the users during the test:
Task 1: Your friend asked you to help her plan a trip from Birmingham to Hyderabad on December 31st and from Hyderabad to Birmingham on 6th January. Please use Expedia website to plan her cheapest trip.
Task 2: Imagine you are planed to visit four cities during Christmas vacation. Plan a trip for London, Paris, Scotland and Wales.
Task 3: Book a hotel in Paris from January 10th to 15th. Find top-rated hotel which has different facilities as you required.
Task 4: You have planned family trip to visit new place during Easter holidays for 10 days(27–3–2020 to 7–4–2020). Find nearest attractions during those days and book tickets for places and events.
Task 5: Book a flight from London to Hyderabad on 27th March which has 1 stop and price less than 600 pounds and your favorite airline .
Post-task questionnaire
After each task, the participants were asked to rate the interface on a 5-point scale with measures from strongly disagree to strongly agree .
- How easy it was to find the information on the home page
- How easy it was to keep track of their location in the website.
- How is it was to predict which section of the website continued target information.
Post-Task questionnaire
After the last task post test questions(SUS) was completed, to collect overall feedback about website by using 5- point Likert scale.
1. I think that I would like to use this system frequently.
2. I found the system unnecessarily complex.
3. I thought the system was easy to use.
4. I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this system.
5. I found the various functions in this system were well integrated.
6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.
7. I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly.
8. I found the system very cumbersome to use.
9. I felt very confident using the system.
10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.
Finally I thanked participant for helping me with the process patiently.
Data Analysis:
Task completion Success Rate:
All participants completed the Task1 (100%). Four of the six (67%) completed task 2 because it is booking multi-city trip some people did not know which button to select to do that task. Task 3 and Task 5 were completed by all six people(100%). Task4 is a difficult task. Only two participants completed (34%) the task4. They felt difficult to find things to do option in the interface.
Task Ratings :
After the completion of each task, participants rated the ease or difficult of completing the task for three factors.
* Ease of Finding option in the home page
* Keeping Track of their location in the site
* Predicting which section of website contained the information about the task.
Time on task :
The screen recording software recorded the time on task for each participant and each task. Some of the tasks like the multi-city flight booking task and the things to do tasks took the maximum amount of time compared to other tasks.
Summary of data:
The below table explains a summary of test data. Low completion rates, satisfaction ratings and high errors and time on tasks are highlighted in red color.
SUS metrics score calculation:
SUS Scale data for each participant:
To calculate the SUS score, Sum the score contribution for each item. Each item’s score contribution will range from 0 to 4. For items 1,3, 5,7 and 9 the score contribution is the scale point minus1. For the items 2, 4, 6,8 and 10 the contribution is 5 minus the scale position. By multiplying the sum score by 2.5 to obtain overall value of SUS.
Average SUS score for the Expedia website given by 6 participants is 79 85+95+65+70+93+65 = 473
473/6 = 79
If the average SUS score is between 68–80.3 then the grade for the website is “B” and adjective rating is good. For the Expedia travel website we got the SUS score 79 so grade for Expedia website is “B” and adjective rating is good.
Usability Issues:
I found that usability of the Expedia website is good from the usability study results. However I found some issues from the test like below.
Sharing the flight details :
People able to book the ticket for their friends & family. While booking, they explained that sharing the price details with their friend will be helpful to them to confirm whether their friends were satisfied with that price or not. Sharing the price and flight details with their friends or family is significant before booking flights for them.
Hotel searching in new cites was difficult:
People need an option that helps to search hotels by place, that would be helpful to them in new cities.
Website is not showing nearest attractions:
When people were searching for the nearest attraction from their place, this website was showing the attraction that is not nearer and not even in that city. The location radius filter option is helpful for users to search nearest attractions based on their comfort. For example, If the user wants to visit attractions within a 20 KM radius, this option will be helpful for them.
Conclusion:
People who have excellent system Knowledge feel that the website is easy to use, well organized, beneficial, comprehensive and clean. Participants who have intermediate system knowledge feel that the system is easy to use, but they were facing difficulties while searching for option because of unfamiliar wordings. They can learn system features quickly from the site after few uses of website.
If you like this article, please feel free to give me some applause *clap clap*
I hope you liked my work, You can connect me on LinkedIn or contact to me at munimansa8@gmail.com.
Please do not forget to give you feedback and Thanks for reading my work.
