Case Study
Airline Booking Experience
Overview
While booking flights has become a common occurrence, airlines have yet to grasp the usefulness and visual appeal connected with the thrill of flying. Many users find the online approach to be intimidating, time-consuming, and tedious.
This concept project highlights important areas of opportunities and examines how the booking process may be improved to allow users to search, choose, book, and pay for flights more quickly, easily, and effectively online.
The case study focuses on research, analytics, and innovative designs that help to enhance the whole airline booking process by lowering drop-off rates, improving engagement time, and boosting the number of trips purchased.
My Role: Researcher | Designer
MY PROCESS
Discovery
Research
Definition
Design | Wireframes
Learnings
Discovery
Problem
Too many ads on important pages
Overwhelming and confusing flight selection possibilities
Overall procedure takes too long
The perception that "hidden costs" would be added to the overall cost
Payment/confirmation websites appear insecure and untrustworthy
Unintuitive and unattractive UI
How I Measured Success
In my mockups, I made sure to address the most important concerns
Shorten the duration it takes to complete a task
Improve the feeling of security in the payment stage
Goal
Improve users' overall experience and usability when searching for, reserving, and paying for flights online.
PS: As this is a fictional product, the goal doesn't mention any measurable KPIs.
Research
I conducted four distinct forms of user research to obtain insights into quantitative and qualitative information to better understand the backdrop and experience of booking flights. This allowed me to examine how consumers presently book flights, identify pain points, and suggest changes.
Survey
I used SurveyMonkey to build a 6-question survey that focused on client demographics, booking history, and other variables that influence their booking decisions.
The survey was completed by 30 participants, which allowed me to detect patterns and understand various use cases linked to user behavior when looking for and purchasing tickets online.
Competitive Benchmarking
I did two separate benchmarking studies, each focusing on the industry's present leaders. I prefer to use flight aggregators like Skyscanner as well as direct airlines like AirFrance and Transavia.
I intended to do usability testing on these websites, thus it made sense to examine them to aid in my knowledge of the tool and to help me better frame my usability questions and tasks.
Interviews
I performed six interviews with people who fit the most prevalent personalities and came from a variety of demographic backgrounds. This covered age, gender, region, education, and technical competence, all of which had the trait of often booking flights.
These interviews were composed in a way that allowed me to better understand the following:
Their technological background
Their website usage
Their experience booking flights
Usability Testing
During this research, I conducted two usability tests. I performed them on current airline websites early on in the process to assess user engagement and record pain areas and explore methods to alleviate them.
Definition
It was time to go through the material to discover similarities and categorize the pain points, make recommendations, and produce a design proposal after I had accumulated enough data.
Methods used to Analyze:
Affinity Diagram
User Journey Mapping
Affinity Diagram
For my Affinity Diagram, I compiled the feedback and collated everything into ten main groups:
Flight Search
Search Calendar
Flight Selection
Flight Dates
User Experience
Communication
Ticket Management
Seat Selection
Additional Services
Exploration
User Journey Map
Mapping the users’ journey stages, goals, behaviors, context, pain points and overall satisfaction allowed me to identify patterns and pain points where we needed to start experimenting with new ideas to brainstorm better usability opportunities.
Learnings
Most people book through a third-party aggregator
Most people book on their computer over mobile
People are money conscious and want pricing to be transparent and readily availability
Top three booking factors (ranked most important to least important)
Price
Date and departure /landing time of flight
Number of layovers / total travel time
Top Wants
Increase calendar functionality and usage
Decrease/eliminate hidden costs (i.e luggage pricing, fees, flight price increases)
Want a review section of currently selected flights at each stage of the booking process for easy reference
Want more visibility on other flights/pricing
Decrease wording so not cluttered or overwhelming
Make it more visually appealing
Decrease the number of Ads and pop-ups
Simplified steps and more reliability in the website
Design | Wireframes
Building a solution
User flow and Information Architecture: outlining the flow of the ideal booking process
Low Fidelity Sketches: pen and paper sketches
Medium Fidelity Sketches: using Figma, I created grayscale layouts of each page within the booking process, highlighting the main idea design and process flow
Wireframes: comprehensive, in-depth handoff document
Prototype: using Figma, created a grayscale prototype
User-flow and Information Architecture
I built an ideal workflow based on the three major stages: search, book, and purchase using information from rivals' existing workflows as well as the user journey map.
Designing how the tool would be used then allowed me to begin ideating on what would need to be included into the stage in my design process.
Low Fidelity Sketches
I was able to sketch out my ideas for overall flow, pages to include, and more detailed opportunities such as labeling and potential interactions over the numerous iterations I drew.
I use drawing to get all of my thoughts down on paper, no matter what they are, and see what stays. I ask myself questions, scribble down ideas to think about, and build a list of areas I need to research more.
Wireframes
I went on to making low-fidelity grayscale prototypes in Figma once I was satisfied with my sketches. This allows me to make sure that everything I want to add fits inside the specified time period without jeopardizing the experience's integrity. I designed 19 distinct screen states to demonstrate the process from beginning to end, emphasizing the interactions and material that would be presented.
I generated formal handoff wireframe documentation when the designs were completed, documenting in detail every interaction the tool would make. This contained every screen state as well as any other relevant information that the developer could find useful.
Final Design
Finally, I created the final version of the website, which has a more improved user interface. Here's a link to a prototype I made that shows how I came up with a solution for the booking process.
Here is an interactive prototype of the solution.
Learnings
On this project, I was able to go deeply into a variety of research methodologies and investigate how they function in various settings. It was a great chance to work with such a well-known and frequently used product while yet being able to identify areas for improvement through research.
My biggest takeaways are highlighted below:
Even among the most popular products, benchmark comparison research and evaluating competitor products can help you identify where improvements can be made.
Using tools like Figma, Miro, and Invision allowed me to avoid creating in-depth wire-framing documentation. This was a good practice and an excellent learning chance for me to see how much effort and thinking goes into each step on each page of the experience.
All interviews and usability testing should be recorded. (This is something I already do, but it's astonishing how often you need to refer to them.)
Recognizing that you have a clear grasp of your research objectives, selecting the appropriate audience, determining the appropriate research techniques, and asking the appropriate questions. This can make or break your final result.