Expedia Trips
Usability Study: Mobile Web Experience
Tina Tran, Lily Yang, Marianna Nam, Patriz E Daroy
Expedia recently introduced the ability to save items to a "Trip" in an effort to simplify and ease the process of trip planning and organization. The Experience Design team was interested in gathering qualitative feedback from travelers to identify areas of confusion and ways to improve the new Trips experience. Our team was approached with the request to conduct usability tests on Expedia's live site.
Project Overview
My Contribution
I was a User Researcher in my team for the 10 weeks project. I created and moderated the study plan with my team. I also analyzed the quantitative and qualitative data with my team to find key issues with the mobile experience and presented to the stakeholders to support design changes.
The overall purpose of the study was to establish baseline usability data for Expedia’s Trips Experience on mobile web. Our goals were as follows:
Evaluate the ease of creating a Trip and saving items
Identify points of friction and confusion in Trip creation and modification
Understand users' expectations for the Trips experience
Objectives
Research Questions
To kick off the project, my team connected with the Trips Team at Expedia to understand their usability concerns and what they hope to learn about users' experience with their product. We aligned on the following four research questions concerning the to focus on for this study.
1. How easily and successfully do users discover the:
Trips tab?
Heart save feature within the search results for Stays and Things to Do?
2. How easily and successfully do users interact with Trips features?
3. What obstacles prevent users from creating new Trips and/or finding their existing Trips?
4. What are users’ goals with using Trips features? How well do these features support these user goals?
Working with stakeholders to define the scope of the study
Participant Recruitment
Working with stakeholders from Expedia, we defined the target study participant as someone who is primarily responsible for planning travel in their household and/or group and takes at least 2 leisure trips in a typical year (prior to the pandemic).
Partnering with User Research International (URI), we utilized a screening questionnaire to recruit a total of 9 participants who represented a range of traveler profiles across age, gender, occupations, experience using online travel platforms, and prior experience using Expedia.
Defining relevant characteristics, travel behaviors, and prior experience among target Trips users.
Methodology
Designing travel scenarios and key tasks for participants
Based on the objectives and research questions, our team decided on a scenario-based, task-oriented approach for this study.
We prepared a facilitation script for a 60-minute session consisting of a background interview, four scenarios with associated tasks, post-task questions, and a debrief interview.
Each scenario was designed to observe how participants navigate and access different features and items within the Trips Experience. While moderating the test, we encouraged participants to think aloud and prompted for further explanation at points of interest.
Scenario-Based Tasks
9 Total Participants
Qualitative & Quantitative Data
Our team conducted these tests in-person in the research lab at Expedia HQ (Seattle, WA). We provided a mobile device (iOS or Android) for the participants and utilized an overhead camera system and Zoom's screenshare and recording functionalities to capture participants' interactions with the Trips features on mobile web.
During each session, we collected qualitative data by applying the think-aloud method, as well as quantitative data using Likert scales.
5 main opportunity areas for improving travelers' experience when using Expedia Trips to plan their travels.
Key Findings
The data we collected and analyzed through our usability study surfaced 5 issues with varying levels of severity. We utilized the 4 level scale below to assign severity and priority for each issue.
Issue 1: Locating Trips (L2)
Most users had difficulty locating the items that they previously saved to a Trip.
7 out of 8 users did not realize that the suitcase icon [A] represented Trips
6 out of 8 users assumed they would find their saved items in their profile [B]
“I figured I’d find my favorites in the profile area and list of favorites…
I didn’t think of going to suitcase and seeing trips there.”
– P5
“It took me a minute to interpret the suitcase as my trips since I normally see a shopping cart. I didn’t know at the time but just tried to click it.”
– P7
Issue 2: Comparing saved items (L3)
Users have to toggle back and forth to compare and evaluate their saved items.
8 out of 8 users clicked in and out of the details pages for each of their saved items when trying to select one to book
3 out of 8 users expressed that going back and forth between pages caused friction
“I wonder if there's like a place where you can compare and contrast [saved items] like in a chart. But I doubt that, so I’ll just click on the first one… and I guess I have to do this manually in my head.”
– P2
“It's more clicks than I would like. And then I just kind of have to remember where I was, and I have to back out.”
– P3
Issue 3: Navigating back to the previous page (L2)
The “See all properties” [A] and “See all activities” [B] links at the top of the details page do not align with users’ expectations.
5 out of 8 users thought these links would take them back to their previous page versus the full list of Stays or Things to Do
“Oh, I went to see all properties. I thought I went back to the ones I saved, but I clearly did not.”
– P6
“Not realizing that the [“See all activities”] link would take me to the main [Things to Do] page would be a little frustrating as far as like, oh, I have to go back in and sort again.”
– P3
Issue 4: Viewing locations (L3)
Users have to click into multiple separate maps to determine the location of their saved items.
5 out of 8 users clicked into the map within each details page when comparing items
2 out of 8 users explicitly stated they’d want to see one map with all of their saved items
– “It looks like I just have to compare in some manual way. I thought there may be like a map where you could see all your different options.”
– P2
“I was hoping to see all things saved on one map to compare proximity easier.”
– P5
Issue 5: Sharing travel plans (L4)
The majority of users would like more options when it comes to sharing their saved Trip and items with other travelers.
5 out of 8 users expressed that they typically share via texting and/or sending links
2 out of 8 users thought that the individual items saved in Trips would be shareable
“I don’t have email addresses for my friends, so I prefer to send texts.”
– P3
“Seeing that I couldn't share my individual accommodations or activities shocked me a little bit. I need email addresses to share my trip which is a little more cumbersome than just sharing a link.”
– P5
Conclusion
My team and I delivered a final report of usability testing findings and presented to Expedia’s Trips team and their greater design org. Our work received very positive feedback and recognition from the director of UX Research and senior design managers in attendance, who shared that the learnings from this project will help inform future improvements for Expedia's mobile web Trips experience.
Words from the Client
"Over the past 3 months, I've had the pleasure to work with Marianna, Lily, Patrice, and Tina on a project to evaluate Expedia's Trips Experience.
Both myself and my team were extremely impressed by not just the output of the work, but with how the team went about conducting this project from start to finish. The learnings from this project are going to be very helpful as we continue to explore ways to improve the Trips experience, as well as reinforce our qualitative understanding of the users' needs. Overall, the team has exceeded my expectations from this project, and I have no doubt that they are going to add tremendous value to any design team in the future."
- Rajiv Pennathur, UX Researcher at Expedia Group