Would it be a good or poor user experience if I guide users through a wizard and not let them see it again?

Question

I'm currently designing the UX for an event travel site. It starts off with the organizer registering and then it goes right into the "wizard" where it functions like an accordion -- broken up into a few sections.

1. First section asks organizer to enter in their trip information (ie. what, where, when)
2. Second asks them to add trip activities and option to create a poll for each activity (ie. going to the spa - what where when and poll question for group to answer) - option to skip and enter later
3. Third allows them to add hotels for people to choose from - option to skip and enter later
4. Fourth gets their flight information and allows them to enter in any airline discount codes - option to skip and enter later

While the users are entering in their information, on the right hand side they'll see a summary of what's been entered so far. If they want to edit something, they can go back and forth between accordions to edit.

At the end they can choose to invite guests to join or they can go to their "dashboard" where they can see their trip profile/itinerary -- once they hit either options, they don't see the wizard anymore.

If they go to the dashboard, it'll have everything they entered earlier in a template type view. From there, they can just edit on screen (similar to how you can edit your Linkedin Profiles on screen).

Do you think the flow that I have provides a good user experience or a poor one because users can't go back to the wizard once they've decided to move forward with inviting guests or going to see their dashboard? The reason why I chose to do the wizard in the beginning is to help guide the new organizers since my demographic is not very tech savvy.

Would love to hear what your thoughts are on this. I'm open to criticism because I'm trying to learn as much as possible especially since I am new to ui/ux. Also, feel free to let me know how I could have asked the question in a better way according to the information I've given.

Answer 1

Although I don't see any red flag in your flow -as you're new to the UX field- make sure you always look at what users are trying to accomplish first.

1. Define what is critical for your users. Observe their behaviour, ask them.
2. Test your assumptions/conclusions (the wizard interface) with people around you, providing them with a short scenario.
3. Order 1. 2. 3. and 4. the UI controls based on these results.

A few thoughts on the flow:

1. Allow them to choose between the wizard and the classic flow
2. Allow them to exit the wizard at any time.
3. What happen to the data if say as a user I reach step 3 and the window closes for whatever reason? Are the data saved or do I restart from scratch?

Good luck!

Answer 2

I think in this case the app logic demands the trip to be quite defined at the moment when you invite users. This requirement puts a limitation, that causes in not letting users back to the wizard, if I understand it correctly. In this case, the solution seems to be acceptable.

If you want to let the user make changes to the trip after the invites have been sent, users could do it in a screen with all the trip details. I wouldn't let them go back and forth in the wizard to do that. The wizard is used to "forge" the trip in some steps. Once the forging process is finished, user can invite friends to it, and any further changes should be done on a trip details screen.

Answer 3

I think if you are just on the initial stages of design, then perhaps don't think about it in terms of the UI, but the actual tasks that the user is trying to accomplish. If you define the UI then you are already limiting the way that the users can use the tool. It is better to let the users define the way they might want to supply the information, and the order in which they would like to accomplish this. Of course, there are general guidelines that you can stick to (look up sites that offer UI/UX design patterns like the Yahoo Library, the Windows User Experience Guide or the Apple HCI Guide, etc).

However you decide to approach this, never be satisfied with making an assumption about user behaviour without testing it. Also, you need to allow for unexpected user behaviour by providing mechanisms to either guide or help them through the process (assuming most people will be new users), then allow the more experienced users to skip to what they want to do faster. That's the best way to cater for the majority of your users.