‘Tis the season for giving your users cheery and joyful experiences. And yet many website and mobile designs repeatedly leave their users frustrated, confused or both. Heuristic evaluations is a common method for identifying usability issues.
For today’s post let’s use a heuristic evaluation that I recently conducted on Megabus, a very popular and inexpensive travel bus site. Each violation has been assigned severity level from the rating scale below.
0 – don’t agree that this is a usability problem
1 – cosmetic problem
2 – minor usability problem
3 – major usability problem; important to fix
4 – usability catastrophe; imperative to fix
Best Practice: Minimize Design
Task One: Buy a Round-trip Ticket
Usability Severity Level: 2
Planning a round-trip from Washington, DC to New York should be simple. Overall it was fairly simple with only minor usability issues. Megabus could improve this task’s simplicity by minimizing some distracting widgets. For example, I’m not seeing the value in a Service Advisory widget for Chattanooga, TN when I’m planning a trip to New York. Also the View our Network Map widget could be removed. On this screen, it’s not clear how this widget enhances my search and buy experience, especially when the drop down boxes include the same information.
Clik here to view.
Best Practice: Helpful Guides/ Navigation Tools
Task 2: Select Departing and Returning Trips
Usability Severity Level: 2
Completing this task was difficult on the first try. It would have been easier and quicker if this page prompted me for my preferred departing and returning time. Actually this information could have been collected in the Search and Buy Bus Ticket box.
Without helpful guidance, I’m forced to scroll through numerous choices making it difficult for me to select my preferred time slot on the first try.
Clik here to view.
Best Practice: Keep Design Simple
Task 3: Reserve a Seat
Usability Severity Level: 2
Reserving a seat on Megabus proved to be one the most challenging tasks to complete. At first glance, you may think clicking the seat symbol is enough to reserve a seat. You would be wrong. No, these seat symbols are designed to describe each seat type.
Now you might believe that’s the purpose of the question mark circle. You would be right.
It appears that Megabus has designed the seat symbol and question mark circle to serve the same purpose. The logic is not clear as to why. Nor it is clear how users benefit from reading the same information twice in the same dialogue box.
Ultimately, to select a seat you scroll down and select a seat symbol in the Lower Deck or Upper Deck box.
Clik here to view.
Best Practices: Minimize Design, Helpful Guide, & Recognition not Recall
Task 3a: Balcony Seat Cost
Usability Severity Level: 4
As stated before, completing the seat selection task proved challenging. For example, instead of forcing users to scroll up for the Balcony cost, the seats prices could be listed under Ticket Prices instead. Without these design changes, users have to continuously remember which seat types they’ve selected.
Lastly, Megabus gives its users 20 minutes to complete their reservations. However, there’s no helpful guides telling them how much time they have remaining.
Clik here to view.
Best Practice: Flexible Design
Task 4: Select Handicap Option
Usability Severity Level: 4
So if you accidentally forget to select the Handicap option, Megabus prompts users to return to the reservation screen instead. Unfortunately, you aren’t informed that the Search Again comes with consequences. Of course most of this stress can be alleviated by allowing users freedom to select the Handicap option on this page instead.
Clik here to view.
Using this solution adds on another trip. Side note, I didn’t figure this out until my price doubled at checkout.
As if the holiday season wasn’t stressful enough, trying to complete this task within 20 minutes ticking away makes your anxiety worse.
Clik here to view.
Best Practice: Recognition not Recall/Flexible Design
Task 5: Receive Trip Notifications
Usability Severity Level: 2
I’ve created a Megabus profile about two years ago for a quicker checkout time. So it’s disappointing that the design doesn’t seem flexible for returning users. For example, the mobile field should be populated with my mobile number on file.
Finally, I shouldn’t have to keep answering about discovering the website. If I’m a returning customer it can safely be assumed that I’m familiar with Megabus’s services.
Fixing this usability issue requires limiting this question to New Registrants.
Clik here to view.
Conclusion
As you can see from the Megabus example above, it is possible to bring your users joy this seasons. Here are some usability tools and resources for improving your users’ experiences this holiday season.
Ms. Biz Analysis
How to Conduct a Usability Test
Usability Testing How To & Tools
An Overview of Expert Heuristic Evaluation
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