Booking a Domestic Flight

with Air New Zealand

KEY:

What Air New Zealand Does Well

Possible Areas for Improvement

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability

JOYCE KIM
Heuristics for UI Design Connection
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristic
for User Interface Design

2. Match Between System and the Real

World

CHECK! Symbols of airplane, bed, car

and magnifying glass speak the users’
language familiar to the user
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability
Heuristic for User Interface
Design

8. Aesthetic and Minimal

Design

CHECK! Copy on website does

not contain information which is
irrelevant or unnecessary.
Consistent throughout the
booking process.
 Hover over to get more helpful options
regarding planning your flight
Super clear headings and easy to
navigate and find what you’re looking for
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristic for User
Interface Design

1. Visibility of System Status

CHECK! Feedback received with green highlighting of

“Plan” button

4. Consistency and Standards

CHECK! Users do not have to wonder whether different

words or actions mean the same thing. Clear words
such as “search”, “continue”, “book” used consistently
throughout website..
Hover over to get more helpful
options regarding your booking
Hover over to get more helpful options
regarding the overall experience
Hover over to learn more about the Airpoints system -
handy headings to help you
Hover over if you need any help regarding
cancellations, delays, baggage or booking
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability
Heuristic for User Interface Design

6. Recognition Rather Than Recall

CHECK! Minimises the user’s

memory load by pre-populating
common questions or topics searched
for making it more easily retrievable
when appropriate

10. Help and Documentation

CHECK! In slides 10-12, help and

documentation is easy to search, and
is focused on the user’s task with easy
to follow, concrete steps to be carried
out. You can search for help, ask
Oscar or look under the Help tab.
Alternatively, you can search for specific topics using the search bar - just type in
the first few letters of your question or topic and the self-populate feature will come
up with popular search topics and questions
Or… You can ask Oscar :) (Pretty cute little guy, too!)

Cool thing, too, is that the “Ask Oscar” box follows you around when tracking
through the page so it’s always situated on the bottom left corner of your page

Ok, back to booking these flights!

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristic for
User Interface Design

6. Recognition Rather Than Recall

CHECK! Minimises the user’s memory load by

providing instructions for use of the system.
Visible and easily retrievable with drop-down
options or grey instructions in form fields. Similar
to the dates that appear in calendar on slide 14.
Let’s book some flights to Auckland!
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability
Heuristic for User Interface Design

1. Visibility of System Status

CHECK! Feedback received that the

pressing of the “Search” button from
the previous slide worked - rotating
circle shape until this page fully
loaded (screenshot missed the circle!)
Only tells you about Koru Hour when you select that price option.
Could potentially attract more customers by having a hover over info “i”
Automatically updates with your total in
NZD and how many airpoints you’ll earn
from this transaction
Let’s book!
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristic
for User Interface Design

9. Help Users Recognise, Diagnose and

Recover from Errors

CHECK! Error message expressed in plain

language, precisely indicating the problem,
abd constructively suggesting a solution.
Second time lucky?? Let’s book!!!!
Woahhhh… This is quite an extensive list of titles… Sister??? Seems a bit excessive
no? Is this really necessary? Maybe it’s for marketing or research purposes?
Thank goodness for the drop down list of all of the frequent flyer programmes!
Tells you what they’re going to do with your
information, which is good
Handy having this for people who
don’t have insurance through their
credit card or may need to cancel
their flight unexpectedly but I don’t
need insurance going to Auckland
so moving right along...
Won’t personally need a car but
might be helpful for people who
will need one for their trip!
Hopefully all I need to
do now is choose some
seats and pay!
Easy layout for choosing a seat for both
flights with each seat’s price clearly listed
on the button. Colour coded with a key to
the right to indicate exit row seats, available
seats, occupied seats or unavailable seats.
Comes up with more information regarding
the chosen seat when you click on a
particular button and potential requirements
for which you must accept to continue
I’ve chosen my seats for
both flights, let’s
continue!
 Super easy to see all of the important
details of my return trip so I can review
everything in one glance
Can also close the summary so there is just the
payment field left on the page without all the
other information on the page distracting you
I don’t want to incur a fee of $4 per
passenger per one way journey by paying
with my credit or debit card! Better choose
the online banking method. I’m glad Air New
Zealand mentioned this or else I would have
been confused by the extra $8!
Click!
Didn’t I just select ANZ and continue
in the Air New Zealand site??

Let’s try this again...

And this is as far as I will go as I’m not really
purchasing these tickets to Auckland!

I’m guessing it will log me into my ANZ online

banking and there it will prompt me to pay
using a “pay now” button to finalise the
payment for the return flight
Areas for Improvement
1. During the flight selection stage, the selected day icon is the same colour (teal) as the price option for
seat+bag, when the reflected price option should be for the seat only price option (green) as it is the
cheapest option (Slide 17)
2. When selecting flights, the Koru Hour feature may attract more customers if there was a hover over “i” in a
circle so that, at a glance, people can see the benefits of taking a Koru Hour flight. This is only explained
when you have chosen a Koru Hour flight (Slides 17-18)
3. When selecting flights and a particular fare sells out, the website fails to indicate whether it is the “to” or
“from” fare so you have to fully refresh your page in order to no longer see the unavailable fare (Slide 22)
4. The “Fare has sold out since you made your selection” error message does not seem to disappear after the
first mention of the error message. It is still visible once you’ve refreshed your page and selected a new fare
(Slides 22-23)
5. When selecting a flight, you can choose to sort flights by price, departure time, arrival time or flight. If,
however, your session expires or your chosen fare has sold out and is no longer available, and you need to
refresh your page, the website will default back to sorting by price. If you remembered from your previous
active session that your chosen flight was the second from the top, make sure you have the correct flight
selected as it may not be in the same order as before (Slide 17)
Final thoughts
Overall, I found that Air New Zealand’s website was incredibly user friendly, well
thought-out and easy to navigate when booking a flight from Wellington to
Auckland. There were no times where I felt like there was too much copy on a
page or irrelevant or unnecessary information listed. The website is full of helpful
information, photos of happy people travelling, suggestions of where to visit,
promotions, and articles on what Air New Zealand’s organisation is up to so that
you can keep up-to-date with their current affairs. There were some minor areas
for improvement and I have made suggestions as to how they might be improved.
However, the general experience of booking a flight via the Air New Zealand
website was very pleasant and I thoroughly enjoyed examining this experience.