Usability Engineering

Ivan Drago from Russia is visiting his brother in Philadelphia for the first time in his life.  He is experienced with with public transit in general but not SEPTA specifically.  He is currently at his brother’s house in Frankford and wants to travel to the art museum and does not have access to a car.  He goes to SEPTA.ORG to see if he can get there via local public transportation.  
He doesn’t speak English, so the default settings on the site are a problem for him until he notices an option to change the language.  He switches the site-wide language to Russian and continues with his quest.
He right away notices an option for “Trip Planner” and opens it.  He enters “Frankford” as the starting point and “Art Museum” as the destination, and enters the time he wants to leave.  He then submits a request for route advice.
SEPTA.ORG comes back with a few suggestions.  It shows his current location, Frankford Transportation Center (which is close by), and the Art Museum on a descriptive map, centered around those locations.  There is one highlighted suggested route and several others that he can choose from.
The site offers Ivan the options to automatically select the cheapest, quickest, easiest (least transfers), and most direct routes.  Ivan decides to accept the most direct route on the bus that leaves the soonest.  He feels the directions are easy to understand and is not overwhelmed by too many options or terms.  
Ivan notices the option to book his trip online and since he doesn’t want the hassle of paying for it en route, he decides to pay for his trip online, ahead of time.  He then sends the directions directly to his mobile device via an option provided by the site so that he has them available during his trip.  He sets out for his trip, confident he will arrive without much hassle.

Jeff Baker from Pittsburgh is visiting his brother in Philadelphia for the first time in his life.  He is experienced with with public transit in general but not SEPTA specifically.  He is currently at his brother’s house in Frankford and wants to travel to the art museum and does not have access to a car.  He goes to SEPTA.ORG to see if he can get there via local public transportation.  

He right away notices a button called “Trip Planner” and clicks it, which presents a Trip Planner page with “From” and “To” fields, “Date” and “Time” fields, and a “Plan my trip” button.  He then notices another tab on the screen called “Map” and clicks it to find his location on the map.  The screen brings up a map, centered on his location.  He notices his location is marked by a pin.  Above the map, he notices instruction to “Right click the map to select Start or Destination locations.”  So he right clicks his current location and selects it as his starting location.  Also above the map is a field labeled “Find” with an associated button called “center map”.  He enters “Art Museum” into the Find field and clicks “center map”.  He right clicks on the Art Museum and selects it as his destination.  He then clicks the “Plan my trip” button.

SEPTA.ORG comes back with a few suggestions.  It shows his current location, Frankford Transportation Center (which is close by), and the Art Museum on a descriptive map, centered around those locations.  There is one highlighted suggested route and several others in gray that he can choose from by clicking them.

The page has buttons that Jeff can click to automatically select the cheapest, quickest, easiest (least transfers), and most direct routes.  Jeff decides to select the most direct route on the bus that leaves the soonest.  He feels the directions are easy to understand and is not overwhelmed by too many options or terms.