Vacations To Go
Project Breakdown
For this project I used a combination of testing and persona development to create a nicer looking, easier to use website for Vacations To Go. After some research on the average age go a cruise goer I created a persona named Rita Rodriguez who is 57 and wanting to go on her first cruise. With Rita in mind I created a SWOT analysis to shine some light on the best and worst parts of Vacations To Go. After evaluating the site and the company itself I began testing, before actually testing a user I came up with seven tasks.
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Find a Disney cruise
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Find information about a military discount
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Find the rating for the Viking Jupiter cruise
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Find a blog post titled "Today's top 10 cruises"
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Log into an account
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Find information about the Cunard
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Queen Elizabeth
Using the seven tasks mentioned before (Find to direct the tester I tested the original Vacations To Go site on five users, there were some complications on the fourth task which led to the average time to complete all seven tasks at 2.8 minuets. On the second round of testing five users tested a prototype I made and seemed to find the information more easily which generated an average time to complete all seven tasks at 1.32 minuets. During this testing I was told that the information in the mega menu was to close together to be read easily, so I changed that before testing 2. Before starting testing 2 I decided to add more to my existing pages and adapt one of the tasks to that the tester had to go into the pages more indepthly. This testing was done, like the others with five participants completing seven tasks which took an average time of .89 seconds. Overall the prototype I ceased was successful in making the information on the site more useable, which is supported by the almost 2 minuet difference in the testing of the original site and prototype 2.
Rita Rodriguez
Who is Rita?
Rita is a 57 year old divorced, retired teacher who lives in Key West. Rita loves to go on outings with her friends, kids and grandkids. While Rita loves being with her family she has always wanted to travel out of the US, but has never been able to with her low teachers salary and limited vacation days. Now that she is retired and single Rita is looking to go on a singles cruise to the Bahamas and she wants a good deal.
Motivations
promotion
teamwork
impact
social pressure
Original site
The original vacations to go site was very information heavy and while they did book trips the main focus was of the site on research. The design was simple, outdated, and hard to read. During initial testing I asked five participants to
complete seven tasks on the original vacations to go site which took them an average time of 2.8 minuets. After evaluating the test results I decided that as I proceeded I would eliminate the
cruise booking function all together and focus solely on the making the
abundance of research material they provide functional and update the design.
SWOT Analysis
Stregnths
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Lots of information
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Good comparisons
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You know what you are getting
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Pictures and deck plans
Opportunities
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Blog
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Online booking
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Airlines
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Hotels/ hostels
Weaknesses
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Hard to read
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Hard to find anything
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Have to call to book a cruise
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No kind of chat to talk to representatives
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Overload of information
Threats
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Larger sites with online booking capacity
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Cruise line sites
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Online forums
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If you cam't book online then how do you make money
The SWOT led me to create seven tasks
In order for a user to accomplish these tasks vacations to go needed to be reorganized, making that the main focus for this project.
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Find a Disney cruise
-
Find information about a military discount
-
Find the rating for the Viking Jupiter cruise
-
Find a blog post titled "Today's top 10 cruises"
-
Log into an account
-
Find information about the Cunard
-
Queen Elizabeth
The first version of my prototype was
tested by five different people where they
worked to accomplish seven tasks
The seven tasks were completed at an
average time of 1.32 minuets compared to
the original site which took an average of
2.8 minuets.
-
Find a Disney cruise
-
Find information about a military discount
-
Find the rating for the Viking Jupiter cruise
-
Find a blog post titled "Today's top 10 cruises"
-
Log into an account
-
Find information about the Cunard
-
Queen Elizabeth
Prototype 1
Prototype 2
For the second set of testing I conducted I
decided to adapt the last task to make the
user go deeper into the page. while the
last task on testing 1 was to find the
Cunard Queen Elizabeth's page the task
now became to find the deck plans for the
Cunard Queen Elizabeth.
For this prototype I made more of the
pages useable and added a page for the
deck plans for the Queen Elizabeth, along
with a few design changes. It took the
testers an average of .89 seconds to
complete the seven tasks.
-
Find a Disney cruise
-
Find information about a military discount
-
Find the rating for the Viking Jupiter cruise
-
Find a blog post titled "Today's top 10 cruises"
-
Log into an account
-
Find information about the Cunard
-
Queen Elizabeth
Final thoughts
Throughout this project I have had to adapt what I wanted to do to what could be done in the amount of time given and the capability of the software available. Not using Axure but knowing what the possibilities were on it and then seeing the possibilities on XD was limiting. Overall the prototype I created was effective, this can be seen by looking at the average time it took to finish seven tasks. I learned a lot about XD and the organization of information. If I did a third prototype I would work on hierarchy within the pages, I would
like to go into the site deeper and add more functions, change the sizing of many of the pictures, and adjust some of the type sizes. These things would help with the overall function as well
as appearance of the site.