Critique-Kevin+Heiting

Kevin Heiting

Critique of lonelyplanet.com


 * 1 Strive for consistency. **

The sequences of actions are not at all consistent throughout the website. Menus for prompts for searching for location and destination are completely inconsistent with some having text boxes, others with drop down menus, and others with map point selection. The use of maps as menus is not present is some pages with similar functionality to pages that do make use of maps. The pages with maps as menus are inconsistent in functionality. The tab "hotels" the map is unlabeled and less functional with only 7 geographic subdivisions. All the other map menus have more sub-regions, are labeled clearly by sub-region, are larger and more legible. The terminology of the prompts are very different with some pages asking for("location", "destination") and other asking for ("from", "to").

Some tabs have all fields for required information on the first page, whereas others will have only one field on a page followed by another entry of information on the following page. Some tabs have map interfaces that will cause another map interface to appear on the web page once a sub-region is selected on the map, while the "hotels" tab has a map that leads to another page with a list of textual links


 * 2 Enable frequent users to use shortcuts. **

Shortcuts are not implemented in any way except for the search dialog box on the top left of the screen, which is able to retrieve travel guides for locations with the indicated keywords. Abbreviations and function keys are not implemented and could be useful when going through a list of countries on the "hotels" tab page.


 * 3 Offer informative feedback. **

The feedback for choosing a location on a map interface or submitting a form will bring up a new page. Adding travel guides to the shopping cart is a form of system feedback when an item is chosen for purchase.


 * 4 Design dialog to yield closure. **

The interface for choosing locations and destinations use well organized sequences of actions whether the interface is a form or a map. The selection of one sub-region leads to the selection of a sub-sub-region and so on until the user finds the specific locality that is desired to be visited.


 * 5 Offer simple error handling. **

There is no possibility of an error by the user except for searching by misspelled keyword. The incorrect spelling can't be compensated for reasonably.


 * 6 Permit easy reversal of actions. **

The interface for choosing locations and destinations use well organized sequences of actions that are all reversible. The problem is that only some of the sequences require only one piece of information to be entered at each stage, whereas other sequences require multiple pieces of information and makes the reversal actions more tedious and difficult to change only one piece of information at a time. Also, when a sequence is reversed, the previous selections are cleared and reset.


 * 7 Support internal locus of control. **

The site is interactive and only responds to the internal focus of the user's actions. The user never responds to the systems actions, except for exploring the options requested and returned to the user. The system displays new or popular travel guides in the home page at convenient locations(at the bottom of the page) that are not obstructive to the user's focus.


 * 8 Reduce short-term memory load. **

The sequences are all short and start with a region or group and then iteratively enters sub-regions of the original region or group until a specific selection is available. The only problem is that the layers of regions are not revealed as the sequences progress and you are left with only a title on the page or map for the current sub-section. A display of the hierarchy of the regions would be useful, either textual or as a zoom-in box for the global map.