State-of-the-art analysis - Jan Brifkany

Background

Visitstockholm.se is Stockholm official visit guide. The site is a platform for foreign and Swedish tourist visiting Stockholm. Visit Stockholm was launched in hope that Stockholm would become one of Europe’s most attractive destination and to communicate Stockholm as “Stockholm – the Capital of Scandinavia”. Visit Stockholm’s main goal is to make Stockholm attractive and visible for both Swedish and foreign visitors. 

Top of the site

Visit Stockholms objective is to inform visitors about what Stockholm has to offer and the Stockholm lifestyle via their site Visitstockholm.se Visit Stockholm has a user-friendly, easy-to-use site that achieves to inform the visitor what Stockholm offers on a single page. The site only supports English and Swedish. This could be a Visitstockholm.se have subsites that aren’t relevant to this analysis, these will not be included.

Menu that appears after clicking on the options

When pressing one of the three options that appears on the middle of their site, a roll-down menu appears and represents all the choices. What they could do is to have it under one simple click. The user gets confused when clicking on one of the options and all of them shows up. This could easily be reduced by putting the three categories under a single label. It will both reduce the activity when going through the site and make it more user-friendly.

Middle of the page, box-view

When the users scroll down on the site, an interactive section appears that displays different events occurring in Stockholm and different places to be visited. The user can choose from displaying the events as boxes, as a list or have the events on a map. By having different view-options the sites promotes accessibility and making the site explorable and browsable. 

List-view

Map option is handy to visitors in the city. The map uses Google Maps and makes it easy-to-use if the user want to set a waypoint to the destination. 

Map-view

At the bottom of the page general information about the site appears and the different subsites. Visit Stockholm does not have a mobile application, but the site shows the same kind of content when visiting from a mobile device, only that the content is suppressed in order to fit the screen and make it user-friendly.

Bottom of the page, general information about the site

Analysis

Visit Stockholm has many aspects that can be analysed but the aspect that are relevant to our project, in my opinion, is how user-friendly the site is and the process of finding an event, attraction etc. and the effectiveness of finding an event.

The goal of the site is to inform about tourist attractions and events. Theory of visual hierarchy is used when the important stuff shows up on the middle of the page. This includes the logo and "This is Stockholm" and preferred language. By putting the events,a attractions etc. on a roll-down site Visit Stockholm accomplishes its goals to inform visitors about Stockholm. The site adapts to the users device, which is more practical than having a mobile application. 

Visit Stockholm has a user-friendly interface because it doesn't send the user to subsites when the user interacts with the site. Instead essential information about the occurrence pops-up below the box, list-item or tag on the map. The user can choose to show events, attractions etc. from different categories like places or interest. This enhances the user experience and usability. 

When clicking on an event, attraction etc.

Above is a graphical explanation of the pop-up that shows up with the essential information about the event, attraction etc.

Conclusion

When creating an application devoted to inform the user, the developer requires the developer to make it as easy to use as possible and finding information simple enough so that it isn't more than a click away. Visit Stockholm achieves its main-goal to inform the user about different activities but the site should categories the events and places to enhance the usability. The site was made for both Swedish and foreign visitors and the site achieves to make it usable for both of the focus groups. If a foreign user, from a country where no English or Swedish is spoken, visits the site, the user may find difficulties in understanding the site because it only supports English and Swedish.