Designing an airline website incorporating usability guidelines: A case study on Philippine Airlines

• Main Authors: Caedo, Emmanuel Garces Chua, Tan, Abigael Kristel Lim, Tom, Byron Thomas Vinuya
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2012
• Subjects: Philippine Airlines; Aeronautics, Commercial > Passenger traffic; Aeronautics, Commercial > Philippines > Statistics; Industrial Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/10602
• Institution: De La Salle University

The volume of passengers travelling via air has increased yearly. It is one of the fastest growing industries around the world. That is why airline companies need to know on how to market and sell their airline tickets to benefit from the growing volume of airline passengers. There are three ways on purchasing airline tickets, first, one can go to the ticketing office directly and purchase their airline ticket, another is to coordinate with the travel agency to help them book their flight, and third and largest is to purchase their airline tickets via online. The study involved the evaluation of the current airline website of Philippine Airlines using usability measure. In order to evaluate the website, a usability study was done with tasks required of the subjects with the use of Morae manager and recorder. The tasks that were given were chosen from the top results of a survey that evaluated the most important tasks in an airline website. The measures used were the efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction. Efficiency in terms of web usability was measured by counting the total time spent. Effectiveness on the other hand was measured by errors committed in the task and its completion while satisfaction was measured by the total satisfaction by the user given in the after-scenario survey. The study viewed the behavior of the subjects and studied the errors and difficulties the subject experiences during the test. Single usability metric or SUM was used to evaluate the current PAL website. The current AL website has an overall sigma of 2.06. There are usability problems that were encountered in the current PAL website which were then categorized into the factors that were included in the study namely content organization, screen-based controls, text appearance and reversal of actions. Analysis of the test showed that the airline website of PAL had usability issues. From this observation and further usability testing, the problem statement was made that the current website is not usable with respect to the SUM standards. The current Philippine Airlines Website has a low SUM score of 2.06. This was a problem since the minimum SUM score of a usable website set should at least be 3.35. Usability issues for each factor that affected the PAL website were researched to know what were needed to be changed in order to attain a higher SUM. An iteration approach was used in this study. The initial design was designed using different usability guidelines that address the different issues found from the first user testing. The initial design was tested and analyzed to know if the changes were effective. Succeeding iterations were made until the SUM satisfied the minimum requirement for usable websites. After the 2nd iteration, the SUM was satisfied thus producing the final design. The final design utilized tab design for content organization, pop-up design for screen-based controls, had texts in Century Gothic with at least 12 in font size and allowed the user to do reversal of actions. Results showed that the sigma of the initial design is 2.73, first iteration design with 2.83, and second iteration design with 3.47. Compared with the sigma of the current PAL website, the 2nd iteration has a 67.63% improvement. It can be concluded from this study that for interactive/transactional websites such as airline to be usable, they must tab design for content organization, pop-up design as screen-based controls, permit of easy reversal of actions, and text appearance use of Century gothic with at least font size of 12. A new study can still be made to enhance and improve the proposed design. Designers could use other usability measures such as use of word labels, accessibility, etc. to attain the perfect sigma. To achieve the perfect sigma or as Jeff Sauro have termed it as for professionals would be the best case scenario. It would mean that the design is so good that even beginner could use the design perfectly as if a professional is using it.