Lonely Planet - Haystack Evaluation
The challenge
Lonely Planet’s online Haystack functionality allows users to book accommodation around the globe. Users needed a clear and easy way to view available accommodation and room availability and to easily view prices and select a date range for booking. Lonely Planet put forward two different proposals for searching, viewing search results and refining searches for accommodation as well as a feature that allowed users to investigate further when a room appeared as ‘not available’.
The solution
Working to a short turnaround time Stamford Interactive was engaged to evaluate the new Haystack design and confirm that the ideas were a step in the right direction. Stamford performed a heuristic evaluation of the design wireframes and conducted usability testing with users. Outcomes included:
- reducing the Advance Search options to those most commonly used,
- recommending a more streamlined search result layout providing more real estate and removing superfluous information, and
- changing of workflow and terminology so that users could enquire about a room which may not be available without having to commit to payment first.
We completed the project by presenting our findings to Lonely Planet stakeholders, along with a robust recommendations pack.