Usability Evaluation of AirIndia Website

 By: Archa Jain

 Introduction

The website "Airindia.in" is one such system that helps users to book flight tickets in advance over the internet using online payment methods from anywhere in the world. When purchasing a flight ticket, it offers users a variety of options, including the ability to choose between various ticket classes, such as economy, business, and first-class, as well as the ability to choose their preferred seat for their desired flight. This removes the need for the customer to purchase flight tickets in person at the airport. User values feature, but that is not the only thing they seek in software. The usability of the software is another such aspect that the user takes into account. The usability of an application is determined by its user interface, in addition to its functionality. If the software is difficult to use, it can lead to a poor user interface and applications that no one wants to use. 

In this blog, I will discuss some of the major usability problems discovered using various methodologies like heuristic evaluation using Jakob Neilson’s 1994 heuristics and think-aloud user testing of the Air India website. It also mentions the heuristics that are broken in those issues. Furthermore, it suggests some fixes for those issues that developers can use to make the software more usable. Then finally all the findings and the result are concluded.

Usability Issues and Recommendations

1.  Login page does not work and does not even provide any feedback or error message.

To login into a user account, the user needs to click on the login hyperlink on the home page. For logging in to an account, a user needs to fill in the registered email address and the password. Along with that, the user is required to fill in the captcha and click on the login button. On clicking the login button, only the page refreshes and the user does not get logged in even if the information provided is correct as shown in figure 1. Also, it does not provide any kind of feedback or any kind of error message about what is wrong.

This issue violates the following heuristics:

§  Heuristic #1 –Visibility of system status

§  Heuristic #5 –Error Prevention

§  Heuristic #9 – Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors.

 

Figure 1: Screenshot of the user performing Login.

Recommendations 

There are two things that can be done to resolve this problem. 

• One involves resolving the issue by improving the system to accept the login details and allowing the user to login into the website. 

• Other involves making a clear error message if any fault occurs and with a relevant solution on how to proceed further from that specific issue.

 

    2.     Unclear input fields in enrolling/user registration form.

To create a new user account, there exist two options, either click on the login hyperlink on the home page and then click “New Users – Register” or by directly clicking on the “Enroll” hyperlink on the home page to access the registration form to create an account. While creating an account, the user needs to fill a huge form with all of them set as mandatory fields. One of the fields is “Name on Card” to fill as shown in figure 2, which does not specify any information on which card they are referring to. This kind of field made users very confused about whether to put a full name or just first name as some users mentioned they had some cards with full name on them and some with just first name.

This issue violates the following heuristics:

§   Heuristic #2 – Match between system and real world

 

Figure 2: Registration field on the Enroll page.

Recommendations

The solution has three parts for this problem. 

• First one involves showing the descriptive or clearer label for the field so that user can clearly understand about which card the system is asking for. 

• Second one includes a place holder with an example of the text that user needs to enter in the field. 

• Last but not the least, a validation to check the value is not garbage and it matches the username that has been entered by user in other fields like first name, middle name, and last name. Also, show the error message if the validation fails with the description of what the exact error is and what user needs to change in it to make it correct. 

3. Country selection dropdown does not perform any action.

If a user wants to change the currency of the tickets on the website, then he needs to change the country from the country dropdown list on the homepage as shown in figure 3. But when the user changes the country to the UK to get the ticket prices in pounds, either the page just refreshes or sometimes it navigates to the error page as displayed in figure 4. There is no feedback provided to the user when the page refreshes. If the user continues to search the flights, he/she does not see the prices in the expected currency.

This issue violates the following heuristics:

§  Heuristic #1 – Visibility of system status

§  Heuristic #5 –Error Prevention

§  Heuristic #9 – Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

 

Figure 3: Country dropdown  menu on home page

Figure 4: Error message on changing the country.

Recommendations

There can be 2 parts to the solution for this problem. 

• First is to show a message with the name of the country it is changed to and the name of the country it is changed from when the country changes, along with displaying correct country flag as it is a part of their design. 

• Other part is to display the prices of the flight tickets in the currency of the selected country when user searches for any flight. 

 

4.  The Navigation menu covers the entire screen.

The navigation menu displayed on the home page helps to provide relevant paths or links to the users for easier accessibility. But it also hinders the entire aesthetics of the website as well by covering the whole display of the screen as displayed in figure 5. Also, there is excessive information displayed in the dropdown along with wastage of a lot of space (highlighted in the figure) of the navigation menu which is not mandatory to be shown there. Also, the navigation menu contains huge images (highlighted in the figure) which should not be included in the menu structure.

This issue violates the following heuristics:

§  Heuristic #4 – Consistency and standards

§  Heuristic #8 – Aesthetic and minimalist design

 

Figure 5: Navigation menu on the home page

Recommendations

There can be a solution for this problem, which involves reducing the content in the navigation menu. Only display relevant links in the list without additional information, irrelevant images, and excessive space. Also, the width and height of the navigation menu should also be minimized or adjusted as per the content so that it should not cover the entire screen.

5.       Flexible dates radio button does not perform any action.

When the user searches for a flight, the user needs to fill out some of the specification related to the flight on the home page like from (the place from where you want to take a flight), to (the place you want to go), and some other details as well as shown in figure 6. There is one radio button on the form labeled as flexible dates which are selected by default (highlighted in the figure). When the user clicks on the flexible dates radio button, nothing happens. It does not get unselected nor even shown as disabled. Also, no error message or feedback is provided to the user when it is clicked.

This issue violates the following heuristics:

§  Heuristic #1 – Visibility of system status

 

Figure 6: Flexible dates radio button in the booking area of the home page

Recommendations

One such a solution for this problem can be done by making the flexible dates as a checkbox instead of a radio button. As there can be two options in this case the user wants to search with flexible dates, and he does not. For a field like that, a radio button should not be used. Radio buttons are more useful in case of multiple mutually exclusive options. Also, the radio button is unselected only when another mutually exclusive option is selected.

 Conclusions

The website "AirIndia.in" is used by millions of people all over the world. When anyone wants to fly, they connect to this system to book a ticket for their preferred flight. However, after conducting the heuristic evaluation and think-aloud user testing, it was discovered that the application has several issues that can impede the user experience. There were several problems on the home page itself, leading to the user's decision not to use the website based on their first impression. As a result, with the explanation of the problem in the above section, some suggestions for resolving certain issues have been given to make the job easier. To conclude, several other improvements are needed to make the “AirIndia.in” website more user-friendly and accessible.

 

References

1. Air India Ltd, Air India, [Online]. Available: http://www.airindia.in/. [Accessed 15 February 2021]

2. J. Nielson, "10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design," Nielsen Norman Group, 24 04 1994. [Online]. Available: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/. [Accessed 12 02 2021].

3. J. Nielson, "How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation," Nielsen Norman Group, 1 11 1994. [Online]. Available: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-to-conduct-a-heuristic-evaluation/. [Accessed 12 02 2021]