As one of my first forays into in-person user testing, I took to analyzing the travel app Skiplagged. The main concept of the website is to find the cheapest flight and hotel packaged together, but it can create a bit of a complicated flight itinerary. Skiplagged is a bit infamous as airlines do not care for the way they book tickets thinking that it’s cheating the system, but in reality it’s just a different way to book flights that saves the consumer time and money.
About the Study
The overall purpose of the study is to observe and gather data about how people use this mobile application for the first time in order to improve their experience. The overall purpose of the study is to observe and gather data about how people use this mobile application for the first time in order to improve their experience. Additionally we looked at how users are able to use gesture controls in the app.The overall purpose of the study is to observe and gather data about how people use this mobile application for the first time in order to improve their experience.
Participants were asked to download the Skiplagged app onto their personal mobile device. Their device was then recorded by the moderator. Participants were then asked to perform a series of tasks using the Skiplagged app and think out loud about their experience with the tasks.
Participants were recorded via webcam and their screens and interactions were recorded via WebEx to enable me to watch for visual cues of frustration and to better match up conversations with what was happening on the participants screen.
User Study Tasks
Participants were asked to complete a set of three tasks during the course of the study:
- Select a flight based on a set of provided criteria
- Find a hotel in the destination that your flight is headed to with a certain star rating
- Check the price in the local currency
Each of these tasks were designed to get the participant to work their way through the app and utilize key features to the app. These tasks should be simple to complete if the app is designed ideally, but ultimately the goal of this survey is to reveal things that could be improved upon, so sometimes even the easiest things need to be reviewed.
User Study Results
Below is the summary of the results from the user study. The entire document does an overview of the study, reviews the success/failures of the participant in regards to the tasks, and proposed recommended changes to improve the app.
Design Portfolio for Andrew Noffke 