Flight Booking Process
A flight booking process that uses best in class UX/UI design principles to gain a competitive edge.
The Challenge
The Aviation industry has been a lucrative market with an estimated 778 million passengers travelling on holidays within the US alone, with a large number of airlines and flight booking agents available in the market, streamlining the strenuous process for flight bookings is becoming more and more imperative to gain a larger market share.
The challenge was to design a new mobile app for a startup airline called Fly UX. The main focus of the project was to generate a streamlined flight booking process. Understanding how users search, find, book and pay for flights online. Fly UX wanted to gain a competitive edge by using a more user-centred design approach.
The outcome of the project was to use the full UX design process to design and build a prototype with detailed wireframes that can guide the product development process.
Preliminary Research
To gain a foundational understanding of how to improve the flight booking process, I conducted user research to better understand the challenges, goals and behaviours of our users.
Discovery questions
What pain points do users experience during the booking process?
How do users book a flight to a holiday destination of their choice?
How might we improve the flight booking experience?
Competitive Benchmarking
I initiated research by comprehensively reviewing best-in-class competitor sites (British Airways, TUI, Lufthansa and Skyscanner). Cataloging components that were effective and ineffective towards what an ideal flight booking process should look like. I was able to benchmark how these sites approached this process and what opportunities could be addressed.
Qualitative Interviewing
To better understand and gain a deeper insight, towards how users search, find, book and pay for flights online, I conducted user interviews with users who had purchased flights online within the last 18 months.
“I search on my mobile to get an idea of dates and price”
— Anna Rogers
“Research prices on multiple airlines sites and share with friends”
— Aidan Jones
Quantitative Surveying
I then took the time to observe and understand how and why users interacted with these sites and gained further confidence in my findings by conducting online surveys.
Analysis
With a plethora of both quantitative and qualitative data, I was able to synthesise insights into an affinity diagram that helped generate journey maps and create a more informed flight booking process flow.
Flow Diagram
Equipped with research, it was time to ideate what the perfect flight booking process could be. I started by mapping a low-resolution wireframe flow of a mobile app that addresses each user pain point and opportunity.
Sketching
To explore a more intuitive flight booking process, I sketched out an assorted number of UI layouts/screens with a combination of navigational interactions, progress indicators, call-to-actions (CTAs) and content.
Throughout the users journey, the navigation will adapt to different screens in which the user encounters. This ensures that the user is not distracted through their journey and will allow them to focus on the task in hand.
The next stage was to use the mobile flow diagram to sketch out the interactions and screen states in which the user will encounter during the booking process. This ensured that the user's issues and goals were addressed from the research and analysis conducted.
I then documented notes to outline the rules and feedback associated with each element to aid with the wireframing phase, such as optimisation of keyboard, inline validation and data formatting.
Prototype
I took the sketches of the screens and created an interactive prototype in InVision. The prototype will be used to test, validate and reiterate on the flow, layout and content of our approach for an ideal flight booking process.
Testing & Wireframes
Reintroducing the designs back to the users to gain an understanding if their needs were addressed (the pain points, opportunities and key components) which they initially encountered at the beginning of the process.
After several iterations with the prototype being validated and tested, I confidently provided design parameters and reference guidance for developers to efficiently build the product accurately and effectively.
Project Information
Client
UX Design Institute
Date
2019
My Role
Usability Tests
In Depth Interviews
Online Survey
Competitive Benchmarking
Affinity Diagram
Customer Journey Map
Medium-Fidelity Designs
Flow Diagram
Interaction Design
Prototypes & Wireframing
Design & Reporting Tools
Figma, InVision
Credits
N/A
