In-depth review of the VisitDublin.com website, recommendations, and improvements

The VisitDublin.com is the official tourism information website of Dublin. It is developed and maintained by the Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority. The website serves as a guide for tourists on how to go around the city, which shops, restaurants, and pubs to go to, and the latest happenings in and out of town. While the website is filled with information tourists need for their visit, the overall look and feel of the website may not appeal to some users, particularly the older demographic.

The design brief asks for the website to be re-imagined to target all age-groups, specifically the older users. They have found out that the primary users are aged 30 years and below. While many tourists fall on the said age group, the client feels that the older demographic is as important. Missing out on this group users can cause serious losses business wise especially because majority of the holidaymakers who visit Dublin are from age 45 and above (44% in 2018, according to fáilteireland.ie). As a UX designer and developer, my task will be to re-create the website to promote inclusivity across all age groups. The first step is to assess and review the current website and list down its strong and weak points. Identifying these is important to know which areas should be changed and which aspects can be kept as is.

As a guide I will use the UX Design Principles for my review. I will also look into its competitors, list down their strengths and weaknesses, and pin point elements that can be adapted to the new website.

USEFULNESS

As Dublin’s official tourism information website, the VisitDublin.com is a useful tool particularly for tourists. From places to drink and dine, to the activities and places to visit, the website offers substantial amount of information for first time visitors. Overall, the website is highly valuable as it serves an important purpose for tourists.

USABILITY

While usefulness pertains to the overall value of the product, usability refers to how easy it is for the users to accomplish the tasks associated with the product. The VisitDublin.com is packed with useful information laid down into different categories. This is important so that users can have an organized user flow, with information grouped and laid down one after the other. This way, the users will not be confused and lost in the website. This is particularly true when you navigate through the home page, where the information presented for ‘Insider Tip’, ‘What’s on in Dublin’ and ‘See and Do’ sections are well organized, but the amount of information shown can be overwhelming for an older demographic. I feel that these sections can be simplified. Older people have declining cognition and so, information has to be presented one after the other to avoid confusion.

DESIRABILITY

Overall, I feel that the website is desirable enough in terms of its design aesthetic. However, for the older users, the amount of information and details on some of the pages can be overwhelming and confusing. Simplicity is key. Visually stimulating elements can be attractive for younger users, but older users prefer a much simpler, straight forward layout.

Furthermore, the selection of colours need to be thought about as it affects, not only the aesthetic value of the product, but also its usability.

FINDABILITY

In terms of finding information, the overall layout of the website, where information are clustered together in categories, makes users find information easily. The search bar at the top of the page is also an effective tool to address this concern.

ACCESSIBILITY

Perhaps the most important UX design element when we talk about the older population is accessibility. It is defined as the practice of building digital content that can be used by wide range of users including those that have visual, motor, auditory, speech or cognitive disabilities.

Overall, the website is accessible enough for most users particularly the younger ones. For older users, however, I feel that there could some slight improvements that can be done to cater this demographic. For instance, the text size for some of the elements. There are parts of the website where the type size are too small and hard to read. Older people can have deteriorating vision, which is why type readability is of utmost importance for the product to be usable for the older users.

The website also used a low contrast colour palette. Older people have a tendency to loose color perception, especially the blue tones. The website used a lot of blue tones and low contrast colour shades in some interface elements which can be difficult for the older users to perceive.

There are also parts of the website where the elements are too small for older people to interact with. Buttons, in particular, have to be big enough to be easily tapped in order to aid on the decline of motor function among these users. Surprisingly, studies have shown that there is an incline in the use of mobile devices, specifically tablets, among the older generation. This means that to target them, the website has to be optimized for mobile.

Cognition and memory also decline as we age. Going through the website, I appreciate the way the page title is showing on every page as you navigate through. This way, the users know where they are and how they can come back to the previous page.

Overall, usability wise, I think that small details on the website can be tweaked for it to be more accessible for the older population. Elements such as text size, colour contrast, and button size can be improved to increase user satisfaction.

USER TESTING RESULT

As part of the process of redesigning the website, I have asked ask an actual user to test the actual website to get a feedback as to how it could be improved. Alongside two other tourism websites, I asked Dan, a 43 year old college professor, to review the website. Overall, he find the website useful and visually appealing. He said that minor alterations can be done to improve accessibility which include typeface size, contrast, and navigation features. He feels that content wise, the website provides ample information for young and old tourists.

Click on this link below to access the actual testing session done with Dan.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the testing sessions done with an actual user, listed below are the recommendations for redesigning the Visit Dublin website:

• The typeface style should be purely sans-serif and must be bigger for readability. Due to vision changes, older people appreciates fonts that are bigger and bolder.

• Navigation should be simple enough for users to go from one point to another without hassle. Steps to navigate from one page to another should be less, with buttons and hyperlinks clearly labeled to avoid confusion.

• Use high contrast colour palette. Colour perception changes as we get older. Blue and violet tones can be hard to perceive, therefore, the use of these colours should be avoided.

• Balance the use of negative spaces. Negative spaces play an important role in separating one element to another. This is important especially for older people, not only for readability purposes, but to aid in cognitive difficulties.

• Make things easy to click. Buttons that are bigger and far enough from each other will aid in accessibility, as older people have problems with motor coordination.

IMPROVEMENTS

Based on the recommendations, a high fidelity prototype was made for VisitDublin.com. Please click on this link to access the prototype.

The prototype was then tested by Dan. A few questions were asked after the testing, wherein he gave suggestions for improvement. He verbalized that the old website was already good enough, but he was happy that the redesigned version obviously focused on improving accessibility. He pointed out that the contrast, hue, and colour saturation was more attractive than the old website. He also complimented the use of pop-ups instead of opening another page for links. The lack of scroll bar makes the prototype hard to navigate but it was explained to Dan that this is an issue with the software used to create the prototype. Nonetheless, Dan was satisfied with the output with minor changes for improvement.

The testing session done with Dan can be accessed through this link.