- Identified site to be evaluated: The site selected for the heuristic evaluation is Tripadvisor. This is one of the travel sites within our scope for the group project, as it is a leading site utilized by people searching for travel related topics.
- Scenario to be evaluated: The situation selected was to find a highly rated restaurant in Houston, Texas that offers vegan and gluten-free options. The search will be within 25 miles of downtown Houston, however, I would expand the search up to 50 miles, if a vegan Tex-Mex option is available.
- Heuristic Evaluation for Tripadvisor: I started by clicking on the ‘Restaurants’ tab, which provided a search feature where I typed ‘downtown Houston.’ I was provided seven options, six of which were in Houston, TX. There was one results for Houston, Mississippi, which I believe violates Heuristic Principle # 2 – Match between system and the real world. The expectation is that all seven results would be in the downtown Houston, Texas and do not understand the logic of having an option appear in Mississippi, given that is very far from the desired location. Additionally, the ‘see all results for downtown Houston’ is placed all the way at the bottom of the results, which seems to be odd placement of this information. I then attempted to use ‘Houston, Texas’ in the search and I did not see any options for downtown, only ‘Houston’, ‘North Houston’, ‘South Houston’ and ‘Bay Area Houston’. I was surprised that the site did not have options for Downtown, Midtown or West Houston in the results, as these areas are far more popular than North or South Houston with tourists and locals alike.
When reviewing the results for restaurants in Houston, I did not see any filtering options on the web page. I checked on the Tripadvisor mobile application and could not find any advanced filtering options. The lack of ability to find anywhere on the page that could provide help or FAQs would violate Heuristic Principle # 10 – Help and documentation.
I also tried to type in “vegan restaurants in downtown Houston” and did get options that seemed to be vegan based on their name, but there was no indicator to inform me whether a restaurant is vegan, had vegan options or other dietary restriction (e.g., gluten-free). This resulted in a very inefficient use of time, since I had to click on the individual restaurants to figure out if they were vegan or had vegan options on the menu. As such, I feel this violated the Heuristic Principle # 7 – Flexibility and efficiency of use, as it not allowing for an effective search on a specific need.
- Recommendations for Tripadvisor: For the first issue identified, I would recommend that Tripadvisor add a filtering feature to allow searches within xx miles of a zip code / city or state. This would help target the search and avoid getting a result for Houston, Mississippi, when the desired results are for Houston, Texas. Another benefit is that the end user can ensure that the desired results are within a given proximity of where they are located and do not have to venture into an area of Houston that is significantly far from their current location. The mobile app does have the option to use GPS / Location Services, but not everyone is willing to have their location tracked, therefore, this is not the ideal way to solve the issue.
Additionally, they should move the ‘see all results for downtown Houston’ from the bottom of the results to above the first result provided. That way, the end user(s) have the option to view all of results, rather than the top recommended by Tripadvisor. This is most likely due to restaurants paying fees to be placed higher in the search results and not necessary being the best match for what is being asked.
Once the end user goes to the ‘all results’ page, there must be a better way to filter / sort through the results. I recommend adding an advance filter that allows for specific filters to be applied on type of cuisine, any dietary restriction (e.g., dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan, etc.), review score and price, as a few examples. If the location filter is applied, as recommended above, it would be beneficial to know the proximity of the establishment to your current location. This must be applied to both the mobile application and using the Tripadvisor site on a web browser. This will significantly improve the search features and produce meaningful results.
The last recommendation will be focused on a “Help or FAQ” section, where an end user can look for assistance to help them navigate the page or app, as well as provide guidance to refine search results. I currently could not find any such information and it was extremely frustrating to be provided 36 pages of results without any ability to find helpful ways to tailor the listing to what I was looking for.
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