usability issues with the Holiday Inn China website. The following table lists these issues and indicates their impact on the usability of the site, along with the number of participants who experienced each problem. Usability Problem # Affected Severity Navigation: The ‘start over’ and ‘finish booking’ options on the confirm booking page confused the user 1/6 low Layout: Users found the Priority Club Login options confusing. 4/6 high Layout: Users think advertisements are overwhelming 3/6 medium Layout: Users want the total price for their stay to be listed, instead of a per-night rate only 3/6 high Layout: Users have trouble finding the cancellation link to cancel their reservation 3/6 high Layout: Error messages were not seen by the user or they were misinterpreted 5/6 high Aesthetics: Search results of hotels are displayed in a two-color format, confusing users’ perception of how many results are actually being displayed 2/6 low Feature Requests: Users complain about not seeing promotional rate information 2/6 low Feature Requests: Users want to see a drop-down list of cities instead of having to type city names in 3/6 high Feature Requests: Users want to see hotel rankings by different categories (customer experience and price) 4/6 medium
Feature Requests: Users want more information on hotel amenities 4/6 high Mental Model: Users are confused as to whether or not they are required to input full Chinese name, or just family name 5/6 high Feedback: Loading screen has no progress bar. This confuses users as to whether or not their information is being processed 6/6 high Background We are the Chinese Holiday Inn Website usability group, a team of four Chinese students and two American students in SPSU’s Bachelor of Science in Technical Communication degree program. Dr. Carol Barnum, the professor of our usability testing and research course, suggested the idea of this usability test of the Chinese Holiday Inn website. Karen Bennett was interested in having the Chinese Holiday Inn website evaluated for usability questions and issues. In the initial meeting, she discussed the scope of the site and its typical users, as well as competitor sites. She also discussed what concerns she already had about the website going into testing; for example, she wanted to make sure that there were not any translation issues. From the information provided by the sponsor, the project team learned that the audience for the website is mostly domestic (mainland) Chinese. They book hotel rooms online for business and/or leisure purposes. Their ages span from the mid-twenties to the fifties. Most of them are not comfortable using computers. The majority of them do not speak or read English.
The participant’s rating of level of confidence in booking a hotel onthe Holiday Inn site The participant’s level of reaction to the look and appeal of the website A comparison of satisfaction ratings for using the competitor site vs.the Holiday Inn website Qualitative Data Facial expressions Verbal comments Positive Negative Questions asked Nature of calls for help Screening Profiles Including the pilot test, we collected the following data from our six participants. Pilot User 1st User 2nd User 3rd User 4th User 5th User Age Range 25-35 25-35 46-55 20-25 20-25 36-45 Gender F F M M F F Occupation Computer Science Student Accountant Real Estate Electronic Engineering student Architecture student 1. In the past year, how often have you booked a hotel online? Never 1-3 times X X X More than 3 times X X X 2. How often do you use the internet? Less than two hours a day 2-5 hours a day X X More than 5 hours a day X X X X Less than 5 hours a week
3. What do you mainly use the internet for? Circle all that apply Entertainment X X Information / Research X X X X X E-Mail X X X X X Social Networking X X X X Other Business (Stocks) X X X X 4. How many nights have you spent at a hotel over the last six months? 7 3 2 more than 5 More than 20 nights 3 5. How many of those nights over the last six months were for: Business _____ 0 0 0 0 1 Pleasure _____ 7 3 2 5 More than 20 nights 2 6. What websites have you used the most to book hotel reservations? hotel.com Hotels. com; expedia. com; Marriott and Hilton or hotel's own website 7. Do you mostly book hotel reservations for yourself, or does someone else do it for you? I booked most hotel nights online by myself. I travel with my friends, sometimes I did it, and sometimes Yes, I book hotel for myself NA/A by myself I do it myself, and I oftentimes booking online for my aunt. For myself and for others
Our fourth and fifth users did not see the area saying what the total price would be for their stay on the confirmation page. User 4 added up the total because it was not clearly visible. Our fifth user felt misinformed when viewing one of the hotel choices displayed from her search results. The hotel initially said that rooms were available that met her criteria, but after continuing to the booking process it said that no rooms were available. How easy/difficult was cancelling After users went through our scenario to try cancelling their hotel reservation, we asked them how easy or difficult the process was for them. Very Easy Somewhat Easy Not Easy or Difficult Somewhat Difficult Very Difficult #3, #5 #2 #4 Level of confidence in being able to cancel After asking the users about how easy or difficult they found cancelling a reservation, we continued with a follow-up question to rate their confidence level of being able to cancel a reservation on their own without assistance. The rating was based on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most confident. The top row in the table found below is the numerical “confidence” value. The row underneath is how many users identified with number choice shown above. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 #5 #4 #3 #2 Explain confidence rating