Petter:
We decided in our group that we will focus on booking systems, so I choose to analyse the company Smarteyes booking of eye examinations. The first thing I did was I went onto their website, and it was a big icon with the name “Book now”, which was pretty straight forward and not confusing.
On the new page, the first thing that caught my eye was a dropdown menu, which said “Choose the type of examination you want”. When I pressed it I only had one option which felt a bit odd, which was eye examination for glasses. I then read in the text above “Currently you can only book times for eye examination for glasses. If you want to book for lenses, then call you nearest store.” Since I could only choose one alternative, it felt kind of weird that it wasn’t automatically selected for me, so I would say it was pretty bad.
When I selected the alternative, another drop down menu appeared below the last one which said “Choose your store here”. When I selected it, all the store names were either named as their city or the city name together with the streetname, which was fine, but since there are five different stores in Stockholm, I had to make a new tab to check which one that was the closest to me, since I don’t know all the streets by name. It could have been implemented here to feature a map view over all the locations since I wouldn’t usually name a certain store after the name they were on.
Now a list of all the available times for tomorrow showed up, and it was very clear how I changed to next day and so on. I noticed that I could only book for three weeks ahead, and I could only change one day at the time, which I think is viable since the company probably don’t want to handle bookings four months in advance. It was simple to choose a certain time and when you selected a time, you could fill in your social security number and then the date was booked in your name.
This was a good user-centered-design overall in my opinion. The booking system was very straight forward and there were no big flaws with it. Even though something should be altered, I think it doesn’t affect the bigger picture of this particular system. I feel like they want to implement booking of eye examination for lenses into the system aswell, or maybe they had it before, but something is (hopefully) going to happen with that feature in the future, either removed or implemented.
Axel:
Booking systems; specifically the booking system of SJ.
The first thing that you are greeted with is a sort of question, from where are you coming and where are you going? After this you get to put in when you want to leave and if it should include a trip back. In my opinion this is paramount to have at the first screen, because it does not just dispel any doubt about going through the system twice but it does it so early that there can not be any confusion. I must also mention that you have the opportunity (in different tabs, but still visible on the first page) to acquire tickets for different periods of time, cheaper and immediate tickets and the option to know when its the most cheap to travel.
During this screen you also have the option of choosing several methods of transportation including busses and such.
The next presented is of the different options of what train one chooses to take and what class one chooses to travel in. The are different prices based on how luxurious one wishes to travel. I think it is important to have this feature of previewing the price to avoid choosing travels one does not have the money for. You also get the information if you can reschedule your trip.
After this you are met with screens concerning different ways of traveling, such as if one want a private room lunch and so forth. This is also an important part and all the prices are added up for simplicity. One also has the ability to choose where one sits.
All in all, I believe that this system is incredibly efficient but could make use of more graphical interfaces for choosing seats instead of tricky searchfields and bars. It is a stable and allround solid system.
Ted:
In the text below I make a short analysis of a system that is related to the one we are trying to create for our project. Since the group decided the area our project was gonna be touching on was booking systems I took a look at how sf.se handles bookings for tickets for their various movie theatres in the Stockholm area.
On the start page there is a big option labeled "Biljetter" which is straight forward and simple. After that you get to choose whether you want to check your reservations, purchase a gift certificate or just buy tickets. This was done using a dropdown-menu which seems like a good idea because all the options fall under the same category, "biljetter". On the next page the actual booking process is started. Firstly there are two dropdown-menus which let you specify the date and which particular cinema you would like to go to. This is all organized in a logical time-order or alphabetical for the cinemas. So far it has all been very logical and straight forward. One thing to note is that the interface is white to a red background which makes it easy to see. Nothing melds with the background or is blurry for example. Another important fact I think is that there isn't a lot going on on the screen. Basically the only thing shown is what you actually need to worry about, above and below there's some advertising but in the actually space where you "work" the focus is on the task at hand.
Now on to actually choosing a movie. At first there's a toplist with popular films. This is a good thing to include as most people are probably looking for either of those options and this way they'll find what they are looking for quicker. Down below that there's an alphabetical list of all titles currently available. On the side of each options theres information on the age restrictions and also some additional info on whether theres Swedish subtitles for example. It's all very neat and practically impossible to miss interpret. Once a movie has been chosen more information shows up on the right side of the initial menus. Now you get to see the various screenings during the selected day. For every time choice theres a number which indicates hopw many seats are available. This is not really expressed anywhere so theres room for misunderstnadings here. A simple solution would be to include a headline on the top. Another thing that seems unneccesary is the fact that the screenings that have already started and/or ended pop up aswell. There's really no reason for them to be there and clutter the screen.
When you've found a time that suits you you get to move on to a graphic interface. This is where things get most interesting. The interface is a representation of all the seats in the chosen cinema. Those marked with red are already occupied and those that are blank are available to be chosen. On the left theres a scroll-menu that lets you set how many tickets you want. One scroll for adults and one for children. As you increase the number of tickets desired the "box" with which you choose seats in the interface increases. This is pretty neat and in my opinion intuitive. One problem that might occur is the time-restraint they’ve put on the system. Once you enter the page you have approximately 2 minutes to finish the booking or the page will move you back one step. This is probably to keep people from “holding” seats without actually booking them but it might be hard for a first-time user to get it all done in the time-period they have at their disposal.
On the sides there is also some information on the length of the movie and other interesting tidbits which is good to know but not super-important so the focus is elsewhere.
After everything is in place you move on to the payment page. Here you get to choose betwenn various options (credit cards, cash at location etc) and it's all very standard and hard to fail at. After that step you're tickets are hopefuly booked and you get to go see an awesome movie.
All in all I found this booking system highly efficient and super-easy to use. I have of course used it in the past which might factor in but I think they've made sure there's hardly anywhere that you can actually make a mistake. And if you should, against the odds, make a mistake you can always go back at every step on the way. Things I take away from this is that it's important to keep the screen as clutter-free as possible while also keeping the focus on the important parts. A graphical interface can be really helpful when dealing with something like seating and is probably a good idea for most booking systems.
Robert:
Because of our groups focus on booking system I have decided to analyze the booking system of hotel booking via “booking.com”. To get a feel of the pros and cons with this particular system I am analyzing the booking process of hotels on the previously mentioned website.
Initially you are presented with a logical box asking for the travel goal or the name of the hotel. Additionally you are to check between 2 alternatives the purpose of your stay, which day and month you are to check in/check out, or simply check a box saying that you haven’t decided upon a date yet, and a last box asking for the amount of “guests”. The option is also given to choose among a set of extra alternative boxes. Most of these information fields in the initial box makes sense, because you are letting the system know the specifics of what you are looking for, not really anything complicated here. On the same page a bunch of advertisements and hotel suggestions are presented which, in my eyes, dragged down the quality a bit of the first page, but as long as the most important feature was presented at the top of the page in an appropriate way it wasn’t really that much of a deal.
When proceeding, information about the desired hotel is presented along with pictures of the hotel and its rooms. It is a bit messy with information being a little all over the place, but after scrolling up and down for some time you get a clear picture of what is going on. From here on you basically choose any of the presented free rooms and proceed to the payment.
Overall the site is user friendly, what it lacks is maybe focus and more elegant design. The most important information and features could be presented in a more refined way, making the overall booking experience more pleasant. A part from that it was easy to choose and book a hotel of your liking. To sum it up, the essential features were user friendly but the overall user interface could be polished to some extent for an increased user experience.
Jonas:
In this exercises we were tasked to individually analyze a product that is closely related to our own intended product. Our project centers around an inventive new booking system for a arts gallery, namely one that ensures an efficient flow of visitors during rush hours both in the gallery and in the adjoined restaurant (Author’s note: our idea was in works BEFORE Wednesday’s lecture which dealt to a great extent with booking systems).
To get a feel of how a ONLINE booking system works I have decided to analyse the Finnair Flight booking system on Finnair’s homepage. Although our product will probably incorporate physical aspects as well it is fortuitous to analyze different solutions and as such Finnair’s booking system, one which I use quite extensively when traveling to Finland and back seemed excellent.
I have decided to focus on the two most important pages, namely the booking pages, rather than on for example the payment page as that is less relevant to our project.
It seems clear from going through the booking process that principles of user-centered-design have been applied throughout the design and flow of the booking system. The average daily prices of the flights to and from a destination are clearly shown on a large calendar-like table, which makes finding your flight intuitive. This graphical interface gives one the feeling of standing in front of a calendar which has each day marked with the average price of a flight to the given destination on said day. When you have decided which day you want to fly you simply press on said day in the table which takes you to the following page.
The following page lets you choose specific flights during the chosen day. This page is not quite as good as the one before because the amount of information in exceedingly high and there are few ways to restrict what you want to see. The average price from the earlier page is also just that, an average, and you can’t easily find two way flight with the average price.
All in all the two page showcase both highs and lows when it comes to the user experience. I for one wasn’t too bothered by the great amount of information on the second page but I can see how it could be a big problem for some. On the other hand the first page seemed extremely focused and useful.
David:
I have chosen to take a look at bookatable.com since its in the vain of what our early vision for our project. In order to test this service I decide to set out and try book a table at that Chinese restaurant on Söder what I’ve been to multiple times but “just can seem to remember the name off the top of my head but I’m sure I’ll recognize it if I can find a picture or something similar”. Now:
The service does a good job of not presenting an overwhelming amount of information on the initial page even though a large portion of it IS in fact covered up with ads of some description.Luckily thanks to a large and friendly-looking search-bar in the middle of the page prompting you to input your area or a name of a specific restaurant, proceeding is simple. User-friendly since i immediately was able to proceed with what I came to do, find the restaurant I want to book a table at.
I input “Stockholm” and hit enter and is presented with a substantial list of restaurants in a seemingly random order scattered over Stockholm, not very helpful. These “newly added” entries is not what I came to browse for, I doubt anybody would to directly to a booking service without having decent idea of what they’re looking to book. After a brief moment to analyse what I’m looking at and figuring out how to proceed (which took considerable longer than the previous page) I manage to narrow the search area down to Söder as well as to Asian restaurants. Among the now thinned out list I do find a name familiar to me: Ho’s. This is in fact what I was looking for but unfortunately it seems the booking service is unavailable for this particular restaurant. Shoot.
After clicking around for a while among other restaurants I ran into serious problems with the quality of the error messages provided when a booking was unable to be made. A generic message was displayed prompting you to revise your booking settings and try again, not very helpful to say the least. At a restaurant I was unable to do a booking so I tried numerous combinations of settings and figured out that they only accepted bookings 2 days in advance, something the booking system failed to inform me of, not user-friendly.
All in all was it relatively straight forward to find the restaurant and book a table which is good but dealing with errors and different ways different restaurants deal with bookings was lacking at times. Different restaurants also had varying amounts of information available on their page, presumably are the restaurants partly responsible for filling out the details, but inconsistency is annoying and lessens the user experience. Bookatable.com serves in the end as an adequate database for restaurants but lacks in the actual booking department.
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