National Geographic Expeditions
study | heuristic evaluation
National Geographic Expeditions aims to inspire people to care about the planet, by providing significant and purposeful opportunities for people to explore.
The focus here was to analyze and assess their desktop website, looking at the pages to see if they meet the standard heuristic practices, analyzing their navigation to see if it can be adjusted, as well as looking at the typical user flow.
Methods
Heuristic Evaluation
Information Architecture
Sitemap
Closed Card Sorting
Open Card Sorting
User Flow
Tools
Microsoft Excel
www.usabilitest.com
Figma
Index cards
Role
UX Researcher
Research
Heuristic Evaluation: Conducted a heuristic evaluation where I analyzed and assessed the desktop website, focusing on pages to see if they meet the standard heuristic practices,
Sitemap: Created a site map of the current primary and secondary navigation to better understand the site structure, user flow.
User Flow: Created a user flow, to better understand how the primary user would navigate the site.
Heuristic Evaluation
Conducted a heuristic evaluation where I analyzed and assessed the desktop website, focusing on pages to see if they meet the standard heuristic practices,
Overall, the pages met the findability, clarity, communication, usability, credibility, value and the learnability best practices. The biggest issues were found in the accessibility, controllability and the delightfulness of the pages. The main flaw in the accessibility is within the contrast of the colors.
Existing Sitemap
Created a site map of the current primary and secondary navigation to better understand the site structure, user flow.
Current User Flow
Created a user flow, to better understand how the primary user would navigate the site.
Card Sorting
Open Card Sorting
Conducted open card sorting with 5 users, to better understand how they would categorize National Geographic’s secondary navigation.
Closed Card Sorting
Conducted a closed card sort with 7 users. They were given the primary categories created in the open card sort, and tested to see where they felt the secondary categories fit within them.
Open Card Sort Analysis
I created a similarity chart with the open sort results to show how many times each card was placed into certain categories, as well as similarly grouped category names.
From the categories created, I organized and created the categories for my closed sort, by grouping the similar names and content, to then summarize the names and create new ones.
Closed Card Sort Analysis
With the information obtained and summarized that into a chart showing the primary navigation and the secondary navigation, I was able to add the cards that were unanimously added to a category while the rest were based on the majority.
After more synthesis, I then took those category names and edited one further allow users to really understand.
Revised Sitemap
Once the primary and secondary navigation options became clear, I moved onto the revised sitemap, proposing the change in both primary and secondary names.
Final Thoughts
Through this process, I was able to conclude that National Geographic’s Expedition page is clear and straight forward. Contrast and pop ups were the biggest problems found but are easily fixable. Users had a clear understanding of the navigation provided, but there were some issues within the wording that could be fixed. With what I was able to discover the recommended improvements that would make for an even more intuitive site and an incredible travel booking experience.