1. The name of your group, and the names of your group members.
Group Name: Eager Explorers
Group Members:
Gina Gatti
Paul Kwek
Andrew Martin
Isabella Restrepo
Meagan Russell
Marinel Stancu
2. The type of site your group has selected, along with a short list of sample websites.
Type of Site: Our group selected travel sites that recommend dining and places to go within different countries across the globe. Some examples of related websites would be TripAdvisor (https://www.tripadvisor.com), Yelp (https://www.yelp.com), Zomato (https://www.zomato.com), Hotels.com (https://www.hotels.com), and Kayak (https://www.kayak.com). If you are traveling internationally, there are those country-specific sites that offer dining and “places to go” tips.
3. A brief statement explaining why your group is interested in this type of site — why does it appeal to you? why you think it would be useful to explore the usability of this kind of site?
Justification for Site: The group finds this explicit theme interesting, as in many cases, we have traveled to a location that we have not explored yet and would need recommendations and guidance on the best and safest places to eat, venture, and explore. Some individuals have dietary restrictions and having information on restaurants that have vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options would be essential. Regarding safety, some locations pose a higher risk for tourists than others. Knowing which neighborhoods tend to have higher crime rates would be valuable information to keep travelers safe. Obtaining information on other people’s experiences with dining and local tourist attractions is also essential to planning respective trip itineraries.
Exploring the usability of travel sites will help the end users navigate and find the desired information for a particular location. Travel sites need to have a very user-friendly interface and provide accurate results in a usable format. Since the demographics of the end users will vary, the travel sites need to be developed in a way that a novice user with a basic understanding of the web applications can use them. To easily populate required fields and be able to use advanced filtering to limit results by a set of criteria. Additional consideration should be given to providing information about COVID-19 restrictions (e.g., mask requirements and other local restrictions) that will be extremely important when traveling to novel places.
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