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Subject: Usability report on TripAdvisor TripAdvisor Marketing and Design team, We hope things have been well. Attached to this email is our usability study report on TripAdvisor. The purpose of this report is to present our findings from our usability study on TripAdvisor. This report will first introduce the goals of our study, introduce our team, and go over the goals of this study. Next, this report will cover our methods used during our research study and the metrics our team used. Then, this report will go over our key findings from our usability study. We hope that the findings of this study can be used in order to help solve the problem of increasing purchases from TripAdvisor. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about our report, please feel free to contact us. Thank you, Madeleine Le Tre Paolini Gabby Bilka Aylee Neff TripAdvisor 1 Usability Study on TripAdvisor December 11th, 2018 [email protected] Team 9 TripAdvisor 2 Table of Contents Author Contact Information 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 5 Methodology 6 Metrics 7 Results 8 Conclusions 15 Back Matter 16 Screening Questionnaire 17 Consent Form 20 Scripts used during facilitation 21 Task Scenarios 25 Post Test Interview 28 Data logging forms 29 Final Reflection 45 TripAdvisor 3 Author Contact Information For any questions about this study, please contact the authors of this study using the emails below. Team Email [email protected] Gabby Bilka [email protected] Tre Paolini [email protected] Madeleine Le [email protected] Aylee Neff [email protected] TripAdvisor 4 Executive Summary Background TripAdvisor is an online travel platform intended to help users plan future trips by providing information about different countries and cities. TripAdvisor allows users to book hotel rooms, flights, restaurant reservations, attractions, and guided tours off of their platform. TripAdvisor also allows users to view curated guides created by other users and look up additional information about the location that they are traveling to. As of late, TripAdvisor’s marketing and design team are trying to figure out how they can increase sales conversions in order to meet higher sales goals, by encourage users to buy through the website. Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any specific interactions that were preventing users from making purchases on TripAdvisor and to evaluate how efficiently a user can find appealing experiences and purchase them. The research questions that were focused on in this study, are “Are users able to efficiently find experiences that appeal to them and purchase them smoothly?” and “Which interactions are causing the most frustration for users?” Major Findings Participants enjoyed using TripAdvisor to find information about their destination, due to the amount of filters and the high amount of aggregated information on the website. One participant said that they liked how TripAdvisor provided them with a wide variety of options, even though the participants had to go to another website. Participants also liked that the site would remember previously entered information like travel dates, location, and number of people travelling, which made completing tasks easier for them. One finding that we found was that participants did not like it when TripAdvisor redirected them to another website, such as Expedia. When redirected to another website, they would sometimes lose information previously inputted, and felt like they had to do tasks twice. Another finding we found was that participants reacted negatively to pop­ups, often closing them immediately. Participants preferred that there were little to no pop­ups that appeared on the page, as they felt it detracted from their experience using the website. One other finding that we found in our usability study, was that TripAdvisor had an unclear navigation. During one of our tasks, participants were unable to find the guides tab, due to the fact that the sidebar, main cards, information in the cards, pop­ups, and top navigation bar were all fighting for the same amount of attention. Finally, one of the biggest findings was that we found in our usability study was that participants were overwhelmed with the layout of the information on some pages, such as the flights page. However, participants did like that when TripAdvisor provided them with all information on one page, specifically on the travel guides and things to do pages. TripAdvisor 5 Introduction TripAdvisor is a online travel platform that is intended to help users plan their next trip, by providing information about their intended destination. TripAdvisor allows users to browse and book flights, hotels, tickets to attractions, tour package tickets, and restaurant reservations though it’s website. TripAdvisor also allows users to view guides made by other users, look up topics about their intended location on their travel forums. TripAdvisor’s main source of revenue is selling tour packages tickets, tickets to attractions, hotel reservations, and flights on their platforms. Currently, TripAdvisor’s marketing and design team wants to determine how to increase purchases on TripAdvisor’s platform to meet higher sales goals at the end of the year. The goals of our study was to see if there were any specific interactions that were preventing users from making purchases on TripAdvisor and to evaluate how efficiently a user can find appealing experiences and purchase them. This study intends to help solve the problem of increasing purchases on TripAdvisor’s platform by answering the research questions, “Are users able to efficiently find experiences that appeal to them and purchase them smoothly?” and “Which interactions are causing the most frustration for users?” Our testing team is composed of four UX researchers, Madeleine Le, Aylee Neff, Tre Paolini, and Gabby Bilka. All four UX researchers were in charge of creating the methodology and the materials needed for this usability test. Each of our team members took turns being the moderator and a note taker during each test, moderating at least one study, and taking notes during at least one test. Some unique terms that are in this study is the term, “traveled”, “travel”, and “itinerary”. In the context of this study, the terms “traveled” and “travel” are defined as going to a location that requires users to fly on a plane to get there. The term “itinerary” is defined as a list of attractions and/or tours that users want to go to. This document will first go over the methods our team used during our study, which includes participant recruitment, the study procedure, and the list of tasks done. Next, this document will go over the metrics that our team used. Then, this document will cover the results of our study, which includes design recommendations. Finally, this document will conclude with next steps for TripAdvisor’s marketing and design team and final recommendations that go beyond what this study covers. TripAdvisor 6 Methodology Participants were recruited via an online survey posted in social media outlets; such as, Facebook. To qualify for this study participants had to be over the age of 18, did not work in the travel industry, and did not traveled in the past month. Our study included 10 participants between the ages of 18 and 23. Six were male and 4 were female. A table with the questions from our recruitment survey and the answers of the participants we reached out to can be found in the appendices. Our sessions took place in private study rooms in the Odegaard Library and Foster Business Library. Each session consisted of a participant, a moderator, and a notetaker. The moderator sat across from the participant and the notetaker sat beside them. Sessions were conducted on laptops provided by the research team to prevent any personal participant information from being accidentally shared. The moderator was responsible for guiding the participant through the session. They reminded the participant to think aloud when necessary, provided hints if the participant was struggling, and answered questions. The notetaker recorded participant behaviors such as what they clicked on and responses to interview questions. Notes were taken free form to allow flexibility. We used the UserZoom software to record our sessions so we could refer back to them after the session. UserZoom allowed us to record both the participant's and moderator’s screens, facial expressions, and audio feedback. Participants were greeted upon their arrival and invited to make themselves comfortable. The moderator then read the consent form aloud and passed it to the participant to look over and sign. We then answered questions if there were any before briefing the participant on the session to follow. If there were no questions regarding the session then we proceeded to the pretest interview. Participants were first asked to describe the last time they traveled and how they made those arrangements before diving into the tasks. They were asked to compete five tasks including: booking a flight, booking a hotel room, finding three activities to do in a day, finding a three day premade itinerary, and making a reservation at a restaurant with good service. After each task, participants were asked to rate statements on a 1­5 scale which can be seen in the test kit in the appendices. Once the test was finished participants filled out a short post test questionnaire and engaged in a post test interview to review their overall experience using TripAdvisor. We conducted this test to explore the following research questions in table TripAdvisor 7 Metrics We collected several types of data during each usability test to get a full picture on our participants’ experiences using TripAdvisor. We collected both qualitative and quantitative data throughout the process of our usability tests. We compiled the qualitative data into an affinity diagram and our quantitative data into a table with calculated averages.

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