The Website
The website I selected for this assignment was atlasobscura.com. The website’s tagline is “The definitive guide to the world’s hidden wonders.” and users can search for destinations, experiences, food to try, and read stories about different places. The website features destinations that are popular as well as some out-of-the-box destinations/experiences.
The Scenario
The scenario I chose to evaluate for this website is that I am visiting New Orleans and I want to plan out what attractions to go to. For the scenario, I do not have any food restrictions/allergies and everyone is over 21 years old. Nielsen’s 10 heuristics will be used in the evaluation of this website.
To begin the scenario I decided to search New Orleans in the search bar located on the home page. As I was typing, the search was continuously updated as I typed. For instance, when I had typed out “new” before “Orleans” it recommended destination guides for New York State, New York City, etc., it recommended places such as The New Orleans Treehouse and the New Yorker Hotel, and even a story about New Zealand.
As I finished typing out “new orleans” the search results pulled together the results for information related to New Orleans. The results were broken down into different categories including “Destination Guides”, “Trips”, “Places”, “Food & Drink”, and “Stories”.
Instead of clicking any result listed in the search I just hit the enter button which led to “The Atlas Obscura Guide to New Orleans” which I believe is the same page as the “New Orleans, Louisiana” result that showed up under “Destination Guides”. This page had been recently updated in July of 2022 and featured quick links (“Attractions”, “Food & Drink”, “Map”, “Leaderboards”, “Stories”, and “Lists”) that would take you to that part of the page when clicked.
The first task was to pick out 2-3 attractions to visit while in the city. I was able to click a button under the “Unusual Attractions in New Orleans” section that led to another webpage which listed all the places in New Orleans that were added to the website. From that webpage I browsed the different options and settled on three different places to visit (Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, and New Orleans Pharmacy Museum).
I clicked on one of the attractions I wanted to visit and it took me to a webpage dedicated to that attraction. On this webpage it gave a quick description of what the attraction was, a map of the location and the address, as well as a link to the website and nearby attractions.
Usability Flaws
While working through this scenario the overall process was relatively easy but some issues were present. When searching for “New Orleans” in the search bar it was constantly updating to try to find the best match based off each individual key stroke. This led to an overload of information that was constantly changing which is a violation of Nielsen’s 8th heuristic. Another violation occured when I clicked on “Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop”. This led me to a new webpage dedicated to this attraction but did not provide a back button (which can be seen in the “All places in New Orleans” screenshot). This violates Nielsen’s 3rd heuristic.
Recommendations
Overall, this website was easy to use and was formatted and designed in a way that made sense as a user. I also acknowledge that I am not a novice when it comes to using computers, the internet, and searching webpages. One of the first recommendations I have is to not have the search automatically update results with every keystroke. I know that this is what is used in most search engines but I think for this specific site it makes sense to wait until the user is done typing their search term so they do not get overwhelmed with unrelated results. Another recommendation I have is to create a back link that would take you from an attractions webpage back to the webpage with all of the attractions. This could be a link just like the one seen on the “All places in New Orelans” webpage that is in the left hand corner of the screen (“BACK TO NEW ORLEANS”) but with the wording “BACK TO ALL PLACES IN NEW ORLEANS”. This would provide the user with an easier way to get back to the previous page.