Fly UX

Context

A big challenge that the airline industry has today is optimizing its conversion rates. Although airlines seem to be conscious of this problem, one major issue they face is switching their focus from just selling more to taking into account the user experience as a fundamental part of the business.

This project, developed as part of my diploma in UX design, focuses on human-centered design as the competitive advantage of a hypothetical airline. For the purposes of this case study, it was assumed that the product was feasible, viable, and desirable.

Aims and objectives

To understand the users’ goals, behaviours, motivations, and pain-points
To define a problem and hypothesis, design, and iterate possible solutions
To do a prototype of a website that showed how the main user problems could be solved

General information

My role: UX researcher and designer

Duration: Within the six-month course

User research

Objective

Gain a better understanding of the users. Know their main goals and mental models as well as their pain-points and difficulties while navigating an airline’s website.

Tools and methods

Competitive benchmark: This tool helped me learn how competitors best solve problems, what I could emulate and what I should avoid in my prototype. It also helped me explore what conventions have been established by the industry. Finally, I evaluated the heuristics, that is, whether the software adhered to user experience best practices.
Surveys: With the quantitative surveys I acquired data about the goals of people that use airline websites. I also learned what they were trying to do, what (if anything) was preventing them from doing it, and what else would they like to be able to do on airline websites.
Interviews: The in-depth interviews helped me to understand each user better. I learned about their internet usage, their contexts, behaviours, and mental models.
Usability tests: These were the most powerful tool I used, as they allowed me to gain rich insights from the users. Thanks to these I could learn about the main pain-points and difficulties that the users had on different airline websites, observe their behaviours and reactions, and better understand their expectations regarding airline websites. Observing the users go through the websites trying to achieve a task brought a lot of clarity about the problem.
Usability tests were used as a tool throughout different parts of the project. First, as a research tool that helped me understand the goals, pain-points, and mental models of the users better. Second, at the end of the prototyping stage to test the prototype and see what improvements could be done and to see if the users could navigate it in a comfortable and easy way. Finally, in a real-world scenario, I would have tested one last time before release to make sure that everything worked as I intended it to.

Usability test done during the research phase

Usability test performed with my first version of the prototype

First sketch of the customer journey map

Final version of the customer journey map

Analysis and definition of the problem

Objective

To organize, clasify, and analyze the previously acquired information and to make sense of all the insights. This helped me understand and define the problem clearly to then focus on designing proper solutions.

Tools and methods

Affinity diagram: This tool helped me and a teammate analyze what we had learned until that point. Thanks to it, I organized and structured the information in a way that was more coherent and made sense to me. The insights acquired at this point were an important asset for the following step.
Customer journey map: This map helped me classify the information I had previously gathered into high level steps of the current journey of a user through the webpages. It also helped me condense the findings, evaluate if there were user behaviours that the websites weren’t facilitating, and to see where the bigger pain points were.

Areas of work uncovered

After going through these first phases, I defined concrete areas and problems that I would need to focus on in the next steps.

Results page: The results pages lacked clarity in general. The users didn’t find the difference between fares (and their names) clear and according to their mental models, the prices displayed should be for the number of passengers selected, which wasn’t always the case. For the users, the fact that they only discovered the real price of a ticket after going through half of the process was very annoying, and many times made them want to give up.
“Extras” page: Many airlines grouped anything under this category, which was confusing for the users. They understood what these were for (up-sell strategies), but wanted to know if they were mandatory and how to skip them. On this page, I decided to combine and reconcile two different elements: first, the fact that many users will always want to skip this part. Second, the fact that these up-sell strategies are important for the business. That is why I wanted to come up with a simple design and a convincing copy that persuaded the user not to skip, but that also provided a simple way of doing it.

Designing solutions

Objective

To sketch and come up with different ideas of how to solve the problems that I discovered to help users flow easily through the website.

Tools and methods

User flow diagram: The aim of the different versions of the diagram was to ensure that I understood how users would flow through my website and to focus on the primary use cases. Working until I got to a final version of the diagram, I defined the high-level flow for booking flights. This flow is very similar to what other flows through an airline website look like because the users already have mental models of how this process works. However, the flow also shows the actions that can be taken on the results page and that would contribute to the clarity of the overall experience.
Solution sketching: In this part of the project I focused on coming up with different ideas, sketching them, and iterating them until I got to a solution that I was happy with. I sketched the screens and screen states for users flowing through my website focusing on the decisions taken in the user flow diagram, and on addressing the issues and user goals that I had identified.
I focused on the writing to make sure that the users understood the prices: on the left of each flight option I included the total cost of the return flight for two passengers. Then, in the fares, where all the details are explained, I put the price per passenger.

User flow diagram (Click to view full size)

One of many solution sketches where I tried to come up with ideas on how to solve the main user pain points that I had uncovered

Prototyping on Figma. This was my first time using it

Prototyping, testing, and final result

Objective

To develop a medium-fidelity prototype to test with users. I decided to go for this option because it allowed me to provide simulated interactive functionality and full navigation, but it was still relatively easy and quick to develop with Figma. In this prototype I included the copy and labelling to also test them.

After the comments received in the usability tests with the prototype, I set on a final version.

In a real-world scenario, the next steps would be to give the prototype along with the hand-in documents to developers who would then work on it in an agile manner. I, as the UX designer, would participate in the ceremonies to advocate for the user at all stages of the development.

The prototype

The Covid-19 pandemic was a topic that came up in most of the user tests I did. That is why, I decided to include a menu drop-down where the user could find relevant information about the health measures and changes that could be expected.

This page has the option to modify the search without moving form it. It also offers filters, and it has clear visual cues of what is happening and what the user should do next.

Although on the sketches and initial versions of the prototype I had decided that the flight would be pre-selected in the return page, in the end I decided to change this because it was confusing for the user. In the final version, the user has to select the fare they want again.

Go to prototype

Takeaways and conclusions

Even in an industry as consolidated as this there is always room for improvement to make user experiences better.
Improving the overall user experience would help to increase the airline conversion rates .
Having clear objectives from the start is very important and will guide the decisions you make afterward. This is a major takeaway for me.
I understood what “users must be at the center at all times of the process” really means.

Research is fundamental to solve the right problems and to try to avoid pushing our own notions and pre-conceptions as designers. This was something that I had to remind myself throughout the whole process and that I believe I need to improve in future projects: recognizing my biases and gathering enough research to counter them.
Words always matter and they can be used online to help users, to make them feel included, to guide them, and to make the digital products clearer and likeable.

Defining a clear voice and tone for future projects should be a priority.
More than learning how to use certain digital and analog tools and processes, I believe that another important learning for me was to acquire a mindset: design thinking.
I learned about the importance of diverging and converging, and how the focus should be the process more than the results. It is in this process and with this mind-set where we learn and grow and add value.