United Airlines

August 2017 • Team Project for IX Design & Info Arch

Purpose: United Airlines is the third largest airline in the world, meaning their website is used by many travelers every second. A big issue specific to the United mobile website is that the menu does not offer nearly as much as the desktop or full site does. The site seems to be optimized for people using it in an airport - very simple, and many of the options are related directly to already having a flight booked - like Check In, United Clubs, and Flight Status.

Objective: Keep the simplicity of the current mobile website without sacrificing functionality or user needs. 

Method: Content Inventory, Card Sort & Treejack Study

Tools: Excel, OptimalSort, Axure & draw.io

—The Users—

It was important to identify the users of the mobile site prior to beginning the restructure process.

 

—Content Inventory—

Our first step in the restructure process was a content inventory, to do this, all group members first picked apart the mobile site to list out all the pages it had to offer. Since the mobile sites was, in our opinion, rather limited, we did not have very many content items. We then picked things that were available on the desktop site that we felt should also be included in the mobile site.

 

—Card Sort—

After conducting the content inventory, we created a card sort in Optimal Workshop. We selected the content items from the content inventory that we thought would be needed for the United Airlines mobile site. This led us to have 23 cards. We also ended up creating 6 category names. The names were determined from reviewing the content inventory and from team discussions. We were curious to see if any participants would add a card(s) that we did not, so we added the below post-study question to find out if they would:

Are there any additional items you would want to see on the United Airlines Mobile Site that were not included in the card sort?

 

—Treejack Study—

After the card sort was completed, we created a tree-jack study that consisted of two tasks. One task had the user looking for information in regards to traveling with animals, the other task had the user looking for information in regards to car rentals. The number of participants that completed the study resulted in 8 participants.

The overall results showed that all of the users were able to complete the two tasks that were given to them.

Here’s a breakdown of the results:

Task 1: Traveling with Animals

Results: The total success rate was 88% (75% for the direct success rate and 13% for the indirect success rate). The total failure rate for this task was 13 %( 13% percent for the direct failure rate and 0% for the indirect failure rate).

Task 2: Car Rental Information

Results: The success rate was 75% (25% for the direct success rate and 50% for the indirect success rate). The failure rate for the task was 25% (13% for the direct rate and 13% for the indirect rate).

 

—Sitemap & Key—

The sitemap was developed and created from the results of our card sort. As a team we first determined which categories seemed important from the content inventory and from this the main menu items were created:

  1. Reservations Flight Information

  2. Travel Information

  3. Contact Us Products

  4. Services

  5. Deals and Offers

  6. We also included a ‘MyAccount’ to the sitemap so that users can access their MileagePlus, Flight, and Personal information associated with their United Account more readily. This is a feature they can access on any page.

Our participants ended up creating very few category names themselves, we did not end up using any of the ones they created as the card sort results did not show any strength for those created. From there we made the changes listed above in the ‘Card Sort’ section of this report. The card sort helped us in determining which categories fit well together and which ones did not. The tree-jack study also helped us to determine if the layout we had created from the results of the card sort was sufficient and made sense. With a success rate of 88% for task one and 75% for task two, we were content with layout of the sitemap.

 

—Wireframes—

We based the updated wireframes off the current mobile site, as we felt the layout was not necessarily an issue, just the architecture. It is primarily an informational site, so we wanted all the information laid out in a clean, easy to find format. We annotated two primary tasks in our wireframes.

  1. Find information on flying with a pet

  2. Rent a Car

 

—Retrospective—

If time permitted we would run additional tests to see if any items need to be restructured even further. We would also want to add other category items, like Flight Status, we found these to be beneficial from surveying our participants in the post-survey questionnaire in our card sort study. Testing these added items, if time had permitted would provide us with a stronger sitemap.