Tasks

Participants start from one of three starling points All participants will use www. h . com to book a hotel room (up to the point of entering a credit card number or just before completing the rewards reservation) In a major U S city that has multiple H properties. 

Within that task, participants will select a hotel and room based on a combination of price and amenities. Each group will start at a different point:

Group 1    Start at H.com

Group 2    Start at non-branded search from Google (example: premium San

Francisco hotel 4 star hotel).

Group 3    Start from a branded search from Google (example H Hotel Atlanta)

Let the participants start where they would normally start Because you'll select participants for different combinations of characteristics, expect that different types of participants are motivated to do different things. Briefly interview the participant at the beginning of the session to get some impression of how the particular participant approaches booking travel arrangements-especially accommodations-and let them perform the task within their own context. This way, in addition to getting a feeling for the overall usability  of www. h . com. you can also identify usage patterns that could be further investigated in follow-on research. Finally, you will also get a better understanding of the traveler's thought processes and how H.com fits into that traveler's life. 

Figure 5-5 Task description for an exploratory usability test