Hamilton Island
The aim of this UX study was to refine the problems with the Hamilton Island App and to provide substantive, professional and effective recommendations to improve the overall user experience in a number of ways.
Introduction
Our team focused on different perspectives on the user experience of the app, including user groups, target users, user needs and core competencies, with the aim of understanding the perceptions, needs and evaluations of different users.
In this project, six users from different backgrounds were selected for a one-to-one user experience test, and five mock tasks were provided to the testers to help us test the performance, process and experience of the app. During the testing process, we asked the testers to say all their thoughts in order to encourage the users to explain in more words how they felt about using the app, and in fact to get more details when recording. Our team used two interview formats, a ZOOM session and an offline interview, and recorded the entire interview in the form of recording Zoom's screen and an offline camera recording.
Our team conducted initial research, developed Tasks, prepared a script, tested the user experience, collated video and data, analysed user issues and calculated a System Usability Scale (SUS score), and made recommendations for improvement. Our team hopes to help Hamilton Island adopt and deliver a more comprehensive UX design and system, and attract a large number of new users.
Methodology
Task&Scenario
SUS
Post-survey
Participant Recruitment
The participants will be a travel enthusiast aged between 18 and 65, who likes outdoor activities and island travel, has the habit of traveling every year and has made travel plans, hotel and restaurant reservations on the phone.
Data overviews
Detailed findings
Key recommendations
Conclusion
The Hamilton Island app is the only official app for exploring Hamilton Island. It provides basic features such as hotel search, activity lookup, and public transportation information. The app is relatively comprehensive in terms of functionality and has clear feature categorization. However, during testing, several issues were identified. For example, the images on the homepage were not clear enough and could lead to misunderstandings. All the text on the homepage was difficult to read, which could cause users to overlook important information. The app lacked a navigation bar, making it less intuitive to navigate. The hotel listings lacked clear location information and did not provide any explanation of the hotel's advantages, resulting in user confusion. The textual explanations for icons were also misleading. The activity list did not offer any filtering options, forcing users to scroll through all the activities. Users were unaware of their real-time location and unable to select the nearest bus stop for travel planning. Surprisingly, the toilet-finding service was placed under the "Interesting Places" category, which was confusing. These issues caused significant confusion and fatigue among users during testing, and some even chose to abandon the testing process. Based on these findings, we provided some recommendations to optimize the app. Given that this app is the official and sole travel planning app for Hamilton Island, its design and user experience are crucial. This was one of the reasons for choosing to test this app. Through this testing process, we gained insights into what aspects users pay attention to during pre-trip planning and what assistance they expect from a mobile app. Overall, this testing process and its results are highly valuable for our professional development and learning.