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- The MIT staff member:
- Save trip button: She hit the save trip button on the first page immediate after inputting a destination and start date. She proceeded to finish the rest of the task on the my trips page rather than the home page. Thus, she never saw the information displayed in the chart and did not use the first page at all. The placement of the save trip button could have been misleading; instead, moving it to the bottom of the page may alleviate confusion so that the user stays on the first page longer.
- Markers on map: Since the user never used the home page and almost exclusively relied on the my trips page, she did not realize that the markers were clickable and depended completely on the contacts list for getting a user's name and email. Had she been asked for the user's traveling date range, she would not have been able to tell from the contact information. The fact that the markers were clickable is an extension of Google maps and had the user stayed on the home page, she would have had to click on the markers to find information about other travelers. Fixing the location of the save trips button should fix this too.
- Undergraduate student:
- Autocomplete / search: This user had trouble searching for a specific location because he chose to click on the appropriate entry in the autocomplete drop-down menu and then refrained from clicking the "search" button. This issue could easily be avoided by changing the functionality of the autocomplete.
- Map radius and zoom: He commented that he did not like how the radius was reset to 200km each time the search button was pressed. He also would have liked that the map zoom in/out as the radius is changed. Both of these issues could be solved by changing the default behavior of the search button and radius slider.
- Graduate student
Task 2: View Trips and Generate Contacts List
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