1. Heuristic Evaluation: Hotels.com
Presenters:
Varely Cantu
Abraham Castro
Sylvia Tanguma
Ankush Verma

2. Overview Hotels.com is a booking website
Provides booking services for hotels, flights, and has group booking availability for expert users
Has a rewards program to entice users to use the website
Compares prices and ratings amongst other hotels

3. Heuristic Evaluation Jakob Nielsen’s Guidelines or Principles
Visibility of system status
Match between system and the real-world
User control and freedom
Consistency and standards
Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Help and documentation

4. Visibility of system status
System should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
When doing a search for a hotel the visibility of the system is poor, no cursor change or status update is provided. It automatically jumps to the result without alerting user the status of the search. (MacOS, Safari 8.0)
Compatible with Google Chrome
In the following slide we will compare with that does show a status bar keeping the user informed by showing visibility of the system status.

5. Visibility of System Status
Paypal.com
Hotels.com
Google Chrome Safari

6. Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms.
Hotels.com is worded in a manner that native and non-native English speakers can understand and it is written in non-technical terms.
Hotels.com has options to change the language for international users
Hotels.com has options to change the currency, making the system a match with the real world

7. Match between system and the real world

8. User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
When a hotel search is initialized the second page won’t let you reach the bottom links such as contact us, careers, etc.…. the page loads more hotels and keeps doing a loop.

9. User Control and Freedom Comparison Hotels.com Amazon.com

10. User Control and Freedom
Search menu does not let the user choose a children as a default option.
Compare with Hilton hotels

11. Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
When searching for hotel, there is no consistency between hotels, example is one is the deal of the day which has a border, sponsor listing which is highlighted in red, and regular search outcome.
Hotels Search provides feedback of some prices being shown in black, some in red, and some scratched out.
FAQ and Contact us link take you to the exact same page

12. Consistency and Standards
Some hotels say how many rooms have left, some do not. Not consistent

13. Consistency and Standards

14. Consistency and Standards

15. Consistency and Standards

16. Consistency and Standards

17. Consistency and Standards
FAQ and Contact us link take you to the exact same page

18. Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place.
 Good error prevention techniques are in place by limiting the dates to be chosen by a calendar
 Good error prevention techniques by displaying precise landmark and city addresses.
Button mentioned in consistency and standards changes to blue when all fields are filled in. Good error prevention.

19. Error Prevention

20. Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another.
Hotels.com will auto complete
a list of popular destinations
as you type.

21. Recognition rather than recall
Hotels.com will remember your most recent searches.

22. Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators – unseen by the novice user – may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users.
When making a search for a hotel, the user has an option of using filters to speed up productivity in a search.
A novice user is most likely to be inclined in using default settings
Expert users would most likely use the filters to speed up interaction with the search results

23. Flexibility and efficiency of use

24. Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
Hotels.com fails to deliver minimalist design by providing information overload.
User confused by many links
Which deal do I choose?
Where do I start?

25. Aesthetic and minimalist design

26. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
Hotels.com provides immediate feedback when the user makes an incorrect entry.
When completing the Sign in process, the user is alerted with pop-ups and steps to follow to make a successful sign in.

27. Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation.
Contextual help tips on Hotels.com are clear for the user.

28. Help and documentation
Hotels.com provides a direct link to Customer Service. The user can access tutorials, FAQs, and contact the company.

29. Help and documentation
After accessing the Contact Us link, the user is provided with the opportunity to contact a Hotels.com representative by phone or through chat.

30. References
Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich, "Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces," in SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seattle, 1990.
Neil, Teresa. (2009). 6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 5.  Designing Web Interfaces. Retrieved from great-flex-ux-part-5.

31. Questions?

32. The End.