SCOPE
Website
ROLE
UX Researcher
DURATION
01/24 - 03/24
Photo credit: Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash
Overview
The JNTO website serves as the official travel guide for site visitors seeking to explore various tourist locations in Japan. They can learn about the latest attractions, stay notified on important updates, and sort out the itinerary of their choice.
Objective
Incorporating user-centered design methods, conduct research to identify key pain points of the JNTO website, and generate recommendations from the data analysis.
This project was completed as part of ICM 514: Understanding Your Audience, a graduate ICM course at Quinnipiac University.
Getting Started
To conduct user research about the JNTO website, methods from the user-centered design process were adapted.
The user-centered design process typically consists of 5 phases:
Phase 1: Empathize
Phase 2: Define
Phase 3: Ideate
Phase 4: Prototype
Phase 5: Test
The focus was on Phase 1 and Phase 2, utilizing various research techniques to gain empathy for JNTO users and define user needs.
Photo credit: Tomáš Malík on Unsplash
Research Methods
Background research
Competitive analysis
Personas
User interviews*
User surveys*
Diary study*
Card sort
Heuristic evaluation
Usability testing
* These are hypothetical methods which were not carried out with users during this project. For more information, please refer to the process book at the end of this case study.
Background REsearch
To start off this research journey, I gathered background information, which is essential in gaining a solid understanding of JNTO and what their website offers. This information would eventually prove useful in informing later steps.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION
Photo credit: Nick Wood on Unsplash
The Japan National Tourism Organization, or JNTO, was established in 1964 with the purpose of developing international tourism exchanges. Currently, JNTO is involved in a multitude of activities both nationally and internationally, seeking to encourage tourists from across the globe to visit Japan.
In addition, JNTO maintains offices in cities around the world, through which they carry out a variety of tourism-related promotions. Each overseas office is responsible for promoting travel to Japan; one of their top priorities is helping the travel industry encourage Japanese tourism.
JNTO’s Activities:
Promotion of Japanese tourism
Operation of the Tourist Information Center in Japan for international visitors
Administrator of guide-interpreter examinations
Publication of tourism statistics and market reports
Providing support for international conventions and incentive events.
ABOUT THE Website
Website URL: https://www.japan.travel/en/us/
Website Purpose: The JNTO website serves as the official travel guide for site visitors seeking to explore various tourist locations in Japan. Potential vacationers can learn about the latest attractions, stay notified on important updates, and sort out the itinerary of their choice using the provided information.
Notable Impressions:
Clean branding, with legible sans-serif font and bright red accent color (#E7001D)
Features an interactive map of Japan
Navigation is in the form of a mega-menu
Decent social media presence with their own hashtag (#visitjapanUS)
Observed Issues at First Glance:
Carousel slider occupying all the real estate at the top of the page
White text overlaid over photos which can be hard to read
Competitive Analysis
Japan plays hosts to millions of tourists every year. Thus, many different resources exist that pertain to tourist and travel information, JNTO being one of them. In completing this competitive analysis, I uncovered similar websites to JNTO which offer Japan travel information and functionalities in the same vein. In addition, this analysis shed light on each website’s strengths, weaknesses, and unique features – data with which the JNTO website can benefit from.
Opportunities for JNTO to improve:
More efficient usage of white space
Addition of interactive seasonal features
Alt tags for all imagery on the site
Creation of a separate mobile application
Implementation of user blog posts
Personas
The JNTO website lent itself to three user personas – Paige Smith, Meera Bhat, and Sean Hooke. Each of these individuals represents a different user base – age range, education, marital status, economic outlook, etc.
All personas have different scenarios in which they use the JNTO website. Users of the site are international and vary greatly, thus making demographic diversity essential to address in persona creation.
Card Sort
The card sort featured a total of 48 cards, focused on the “Plan Your Trip” mega-menu of the JNTO website and involved three participants. Terms that may have been unclear to participants were defined using an informational tooltip. The card sort sessions were conducted remotely via Zoom. Users grouped the cards as they saw fit and explained their reasonings. After the sessions concluded, I performed a data analysis of the results.
General observations:
Participants 1 and 2 made 8 categories, whereas Participant 3 made 9.
The participants grouped items similarly, but named most categories differently.
All participants were able to easily sort and categorize all 48 cards.
The resultant similarity matrix
[Click the image to view a larger version.]
Participant behavior:
All three participants created the “Transportation” category
They all included both “Nature”-related and “Accessibility”-related categories.
Participants were perplexed where to place more specific region-related items. Two of three categorized them as places of interest, whereas the other labeled them as nature.
Suggestions Based off Data:
Going by these results, it might be beneficial for JNTO to create separate submenu items dedicated to transportation, nature/seasonal-related travel, and accessibility, instead of nesting them within other submenu items in the mega-menu.
Perhaps JNTO should also take region-related items out of the “Plan Your Trip” mega-menu and instead place them in the “Things to Do” mega-menu to avoid confusion amongst users.
Heuristic Evaluation
The goal of this heuristic evaluation was to go through the JNTO website as a professional UX designer myself, and make judgements on content and features I believed either required attention or were working well. For areas that needed improvement, I supplied suggestions based off of my own observations.
Suggestions from Heuristics:
Define unfamiliar terms using tooltips or alt text
Minimize the amount of information offered on the home page
Reduce the size of the header carousel as it takes up all the real estate
Simplify the site appearance and reduce unnecessary elements
Usability Testing
As the last step of this research analysis, I conducted usability tests with three participants via Zoom. With this testing method, I aimed to discover user pain points existent within the JNTO website. To conduct these tests, I formulated five tasks for each user to accomplish on the site. As they went through the task, I set a time to check how long the task took, recorded observations and asked questions about their thought process. Upon concluding the sessions and analyzing the results, I could derive suggestions for further improvements to the JNTO website.
User feedback:
Using Japanese words can be confusing for site visitors without being given definitions in the form of alt text or tooltips.
Add more quality of life changes, such as a floating favorites button, a sticky article navigation, and changing hover menus to clickable menus.
Preferred having all the information on a certain topic available in a single view, rather than having to click multiple links to see all available content.
The Tasks
Task 1
You’re planning a week-long trip to Japan in late March, when sakura [cherry blossom] season is slated to arrive in full bloom. Make a list of three cities in Japan where you’d be able to view cherry blossoms in all their glory from March 21 – March 28.
Task 2
As a first time visitor to Japan, you’d like to know more information about Visa, currency exchange, and rail passes. Locate pertinent information on the JNTO website, and add the corresponding pages to the site-contained favorites for easy access.
Task 3
You’re traveling to Japan with a group of friends you will have a good amount of luggage. You want to figure out the most efficient way to get to Tokyo from Narita International Airport. Find the transportation option which suits your needs.
Task 4
You’re planning a week-long trip to Japan in late March, when sakura [cherry blossom] season is slated to arrive in full bloom. Make a list of three cities in Japan where you’d be able to view cherry blossoms in all their glory from March 21 – March 28.
Task 5
As a first time visitor to Japan, you’d like to know more information about Visa, currency exchange, and rail passes. Locate pertinent information on the JNTO website, and add the corresponding pages to the site-contained favorites for easy access.
Task Timings
All participants were able to finish the tasks with a 100% completion rate.
Recommendations
The height of the carousel header on the front page is too large and occupies all of the screen; it should be reduced to make way for more important information.
The speed of the carousel header transitions is too fast and makes text unreadable; it should be slowed down or be given user controls.
Some of the terminology used in the navigation is difficult to understand for site users, and should be defined with alt text or tooltips.
The mega-menu navigation is too responsive to hover and changes submenus without the user intending to do so; making it clickable would be preferable.
Page articles can be lengthy to scroll through, and it may be difficult for a user to find what they need; anchor text links within the page can help with this.
The “All” and “Major Cities” submenus in the Destinations mega-menu repeat the same locations and can be consolidated into a single submenu.
The favorites feature on the website is malfunctioning should be fixed; the user has to refresh their screen to see what they’ve added to the favorites panel.
The favorite button on each page is hard to spot, making it unclear how exactly the functionality works. It should be more noticeable.
There are multiple pages for a single topic, with each page having different information. These multiple pages should be combined.
The main navigation lacks sections dedicated to accessibility, transportation, and accommodation; these are important submenu items to consider adding.
Retrospective
With the first two phases of the user-centered design process complete, the next phases can commence. The gathered research and gaining participant feedback will prove invaluable in the upcoming stages. Creating wireframes/mockups based off of the research recommendations and usability testing them with participants will especially be interesting.
In addition, there is still a plethora of features to fully explore on the JNTO website, due to its vast nature. Thus they can easily lend themselves to further research opportunities. I would enjoy the opportunity to test users further on the seasonal offerings section, the interactive map of Japan, and the trip planning capabilities the site currently has.
