I was involved in the project for nearly 3 years on daily basis. I had the opportunity to iterate on my designs many times adapting them to new business requirements.
I had to coordinate with a large number of teams, internal and external, making sure that the needs of all stakeholders are accounted for in my designs.
I often had to balance between conflicting requirements, finding a middle ground between customer satisfaction and business goals.
Our Client’s online presence was visibly aged and their mobile application lacked crucial features that were quickly becoming a norm in the eyes of their customer base.
We have been brought in to envision and implement a completely reformed version of the airline’s digital channels, with the expectation to release in 6 months to catch up with the competition.
The project was huge with multiple teams working in tandem on both the Client’s side and ours. I have been tasked with redesigning the mobile application to enable customers to manage every aspect of their booking before, during and after travel.
As the UX division, it was also our role to facilitate communication between the various stakeholders involved in the project and resolve conflicts of interest.
The biggest focus was given to the booking process itself as it was by far the most critical part of the user journey. This is where customers could be convinced to pick up premium services, which generate the majority of the airline’s revenue.
Through customer interviews and traffic analytics we have found that the typical customer does not trust the airline and will go through the complex booking process many times before they are satisfied with all details and actually buy the ticket.
A recurring aspect of the old booking flow was that it forced the customer explicitly state that they did or did not want to pay for premium services. The original intent turned out to be to make sure that the customer encounters each and every wonderful option.
This however made booking a slow and irritating process, compounded by the user’s tendency to repeat it. By completely disregarding if services were relevant to the customer the airline has disregarded the customer’s time.
Customers were going through the booking flow
many times before actually making a purchase.
After analysing the current state of the user’s journey, we have stated our goals:
The screen on which the customer selected the flight was overflowing with numbers as the airline tried to present all options at once, hoping that the customer will pick the more expensive one.
We helped them realize, that the customer is not interested in extras before she has received an answer to her most basic need: the date on which she will be able to get on the plane for a suitable price.
By moving upsell options not dependant on date to a separate screen, we managed to set a much clearer context for our customers to make their first crucial decision in the booking flow.
We helped our Client to realize that they were
trying to sell the saddle before the horse.
After booking the ticket, the customer was presented with the Timeline, which laid out all aspects of their impending travel.
We built the Timeline to provide Users with useful information regarding their travels, such as when to arrive at the airport, baggage regulations to look out for, what weather to expect etc.
This has created a space which Users were inclined to explore, allowing us to show premium services in the context in which they’ll become useful to the customer.
We have created a new space Customers
were inclined to explore.
We managed to ship the first iteration of production ready designs on time, with all key features to the satisfaction of the Client.
I have continued working on this project over the course of almost 3 years, iterating and re-evaluating my designs in response to constant changes in business requirements.
During my time on the project, I have learned to think in the long term, anticipate limitations, prepare for the inevitable changes, and push for pivots when the requirements drifted to the point that the existing solutions should be discarded.
Negotiating features and solutions with multiple parts of the Client’s organization pushed me to view design problems in a holistic way: a solution is only viable if it satisfies all the stakeholders involved.
