Company
Team Project
Year
2019
Type
UX Pattern
Redesign
Design System
Air Canada App Redesign
This project provides a detailed analysis of the heuristic process used to evaluate the Air Canada mobile application. The evaluation itself was performed using the heuristic usability method provided by Jakob Nielsen. With such a strong Canadian brand at stake, I knew this would be a significant challenge.
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Therefore, I decided to identify the usability issues and propose a redesign. In the following article, I will show you our step-by-step evaluation process for the Air Canada app.
Role
Ewan and I created our design based on user feedback and native first. We cooperated during the whole process while re-designing it.
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To save time, we researched by dividing user evaluations and app analysis. Our processing compiled each other's results and evaluated them objectively to find the key problems and prioritize maximizing app efficiency.
By analyzing the ratings of different airlines and their apps, we have collected ample design references for premium design.
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Strategy
For this project, five heuristics were used, focusing on the core functionalities of the Air Canada application: Booking a flight ticket system.
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I researched other flag carriers apps such as Korean Air, Emirates Air, Japan Airline, and Alaska Air (Alaska Air is picked #1 of airlines with a great mobile app on the Tripsavvy website). All the apps focused on the booking systems, checking a flight schedule, changing and upgrading flight tickets for their users.
While testing the booking task flow in the Air Canada app, I saw unreadable text information and complicated to choose a flight ticket option. And the Air Canada app rating is pretty lower in Apple Store and Google Play.
Therefore, Ewan and I considered the user's reviews and our experiences based on what we evaluated through the Jakob Nielsen heuristic evaluation. And then how we re-design the app for improving the User interface design.
Heuristic Evaluation
​is a quick method to evaluate the usability of a product.
Ten heuristics from Jakob Nielsen
#1
Visibility of system status
#2
Match between system and the real world
#3
User control and freedom
#4
Consistency and standards
#5
Error Prevention
#6
Recognition rather than recall
#7
Flexibility and efficiency of use
#8
Aesthetic and minimalist design
#9
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
#10
Help and docomentation
The goal of this evaluation
was to identify significant usability flaws within Air Canada’s user interface through the application of ten heuristics. While evaluating, we gave each evaluator a value out of 4. The rate is the interaction using our chosen heuristics.
0 1 2 3 4
No problem
Critical problem
Finally, we found these four heuristics:
#3: User control and freedom
#4: Consistency and standards
#5: Error prevention
#8: Aesthetic and minimalist design
#3
User control and freedom
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#4
Consistency and standards
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#5
Error prevention
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#8
Aesthetic and minimalist design
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Overall Heuristic Result
Overall, the interface does not impede the user’s task and has a few significant issues. Usability could be improved further by designing a customer-focused interface for the mobile application. In addition, a user’s flight search and booking process can be simplified to offer users more freedom, ease of use and satisfaction in reaching their goals.
Design Constraints
It was vital for me to focus on usability and not get distracted by the UI components, so I identified the branding elements, including the existing typography in the app and worked with these components as my design constraints.
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In the previous app, we used a button that directly expressed the menu and some buttons in writing. I understood that it was expressed more directly than an icon such as a hamburger button because it was supposed to consider users of various ages. So, we reflected on their thoughts and used more conversational expressions.
#3
User control and freedom
#4
Consistency and standards
#5
Error prevention
#8
Aesthetic and minimalist design
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