MARIA ALVAREZ

Name: MARIA ALVAREZ

Project: BOOKING A FLIGHT

Medium: WEBSITE

OBSERVATION # 1:

ANNA, 25, single, call center agent.

Interests: music, spa, exotic places, backpacker sometimes.

Reason for booking a flight: holidays, cheap flights, fixed dates.

Appreciates: getting additional discounts and accumulating points, maybe using an App to check her status flight/reservation and boast about it with her colleagues and friends.

Regular practices: Searches on the web, no matter what website she comes across, she stops to look at them meticulously searching for deals. She spends a lot of time and gets confused with all the information. She usually prefers websites as Expedia or Flighthub, however.

Trouble point: information not well organised (a search query turned out to show results she even did not ask for) on several websites have led her to spent too much time in planning and to believe that only her two favourite ones are worth using.

OBSERVATION #2:

RICHARD, 65, retired, married.

Interests: dining out, comfort, luxury, demands loads of services

Reason for booking a flight: spending time out of regular places, searches good price-service rapport, flexible dates.

Appreciates: choosing flight seats and being suggested places and dates for holidays. He wants to find all the information easily and, if possible, print it out or have it mailed by the regular post, so that he can show his friends and neighbours.

Regular practices: Searches on well known pages, recommended by his son or grand-children. Usually he decides to contact the airline by phone directly because he finds that the process of booking through the web is too long or complicated and he is afraid of making mistakes or getting his credit card virtually stolen.

Trouble point: He finds that booking websites are not design for his limited knowledge on the web. (Not user friendly) Besides, he wanted to contact the company by phone to check the rates but the Customer Service section was not easy to find. He ends up asking his family to help him out in flight booking.

OBSERVATION # 3:

PAULA, 48, married, children already left home, senior secretary at a lawyers company

Interest: culture, spa, beach

Reason for booking a flight: holidays or short getaways from the city, budget is not a problem, fixed dates.

Appreciates: choosing flight seats, non-stop flights, good services on-board and after getting off the plane. Not much time to plan her flight. Information must be clear and straight to the point for her to choose in a blink of an eye. Therefore, booking process must take VERY few steps and be confirmed immediately. Accurate information, details and after-sale services are highly appreciated.

Regular practices: Searches on the web sometimes, but mainly sticks to Expedia or one local travel agent because she has already used their services in the past. She doesnt even try other flight booking websites because they are overloaded with ads and actual information may be hard to find.

Trouble point: As her time is so valuable, she will not even consider surfing for deals or trying out any other company. Shes ready to go on and on with her customer habits of booking with the same traveler agent or website.

OVERALL NOTES:

Five User Goals:

1. Price-Service Rapport

2. Fast search (not much time waiting for response from website)

3. Fast booking (few steps)

4. Excellent customer service (before and after sale)

5. Able to customize preferences (eg. Seats, food on-board)

Five User Problems:

1. Too many ads/banners

2. Pop up windows asking for newsletters for every flight search

3. Not being able to change dates on calendar until the user goes back to home page, meaning starting everything from 0.

4. Not being suggested a holiday getaway package as requested to the browser.(eg. She wanted to go to Mexico, but the deals presented on the page included Cuba, Dominican Republic and Mexico all together)

5. Customer service number or Contact us not easy to find