ROLE:

UX DESIGNER

TOOLS

Figma, Miro, Adobe XD

DURATION

JUNE 2022/MARCH 2023

Your client is a start-up airline. They’re looking to create an onlineexperience that is fast, easy and intuitive: one that’s based on a deepunderstanding of their target users.

TASK

My task is to design a new website for your client. You’ll focus specifically on the flight booking process: how users search for and select flights online.

To gain more context and more info I conducted a Competitive benchmarking on popular airline and booking features. 

I carried this research out on British Airways, RyanAir, Air India and Airbnb.

British Airways

Overall the system is a good one, but with some flaws when matched up to the heuristics previously mentioned at the start of this document. The system sometimes isn’t consist with these with these heuristics following them in one part of the process then not in another process. There is room for improvement with these. 

The starting booking process has a bit too much options, potentially overwhelming the user giving them options. But generally is a good booking process. As said before there a few minor issues which could be address to make the booking system a lot smoother for the user. If i was to make change that would benefit the user would be a better pre populating search were it prevents you from searching flights that don’t exist or give you a message to say otherwise.

RyanAir

Overall I think Ryanair offers a great user experience to the user. Providing a clear way to book flights without any barriers affecting the experience. I particularly like about this is the starting search function. Which is a great feature for the user, as user selects a particular airport they want to fly from and prevents from selecting a airport which you cannot travel to via that originally airport chosen. Our previous airline british airways did not do that certainly affected the experience.

The only con I think for the user is that there annoying repetitive marketing features like for cars and hotels, which does provide a somewhat minor annoying obstacle. But apart from that there is a lot of features in this in which aligns with the original huertistics laid out before and should be reused in creating a new design.

AirIndia

The reason I choose this airline was because I wanted choose an airline that didn’t have as an positive review as the others and find out why people didn’t like it. After a few google searches i found India Air. I understand that this airline may be for just india domestics flights. But though the site showed airports it did not operate in or go too and there was no clear indication to say otherwise. I went through many failed attempts before i had to almost guess what flights they would operate in. Any user would find this difficult to use regardless if your from India or not, I think majority of people would it difficult to get past the search section 

I feel like this is similar with British Airways giving no clear indication that certain flights are not possible, and compared to Ryanair i felt like i didn’t have this problem.

Airbnb

I choose Airbnb as it has a very similar function to all airlines sites and i wanted to see how and if things could be done better or worse. I genuinely enjoyed looking at this site, as site clearly one goal in mind but yet has such a huge market appeal to everyone. 

Everything in this site has a purpose and goal which is to find you accommodation, nothing was wasted here or distracted me from completing my goal. Another thing in which the user would love about this is that i barely had to type anything which enabled me to go through the process really quickly and be provided with plenty of options.

Another thing that that user would enjoy about this that at not one point was provided with an popup, marketing material or any barriers, which i found all the other airlines did have i think most users would find this annoying. In general this site also had quite a human touch, i didn’t feel like i was a system or software, but a great and enjoyable experience.

Understanding user goals is critical for effective UX design. It assists us in understanding why visitors visit our website, what they are attempting to accomplish, and what their pain points are. We can run online surveys and observe user activity to acquire insights into user goals. This allows us to discover any potential issues that may be stopping consumers from reaching their desired results. We may then use this knowledge to design solutions that fulfil the demands of our users.

Goals

Learn more about the user’s objectives.
What are they attempting to accomplish?
According to the data obtained, 33.3% of respondents stated they would book a flight, followed by 27.8% who said they would book cheap flights.

Behaviour

If so, what are they? Is there anything keeping them from carrying it out?
choice available for extras and baggage
Which upgrades would they wish to see?
Extra steps are too numerous. (baggage, insurance etc)

Context

What device did they use?
According to the statistics gathered, most users (72.2%) were using phones.
What websites and apps they used
According to the statistics gathered, the vast majority of consumers (33.3%) used Easyjet.
They frequently used this technique to book a flight.
According to the statistics gathered, the majority of users (61.1%) have done so more than ten times.

Take a look at the two provided usability tests. The desktop airline websites Aer Lingus & Eurowings will serve as the basis for the two usability evaluations. Throughout the interviews, take careful notes to learn about:

• Context
• Goals
• Behaviours
• Interactions
• Painful areas

Both the users when using Aer Lingus mentioned that colors made it difficult to know where to go to move next stage. Both users had some difficulty with placement of certain items as well, user one got side tracked by a dropdown menu which covered where had already entered in information. User two also mentioned that placement of times for departures where badly placed and be confusing for some users. Both users though did find it a smooth experience despite these issues.

Users also performed well on Eurowings site as well, but again there issues to address that the users did face. Both users faced more pop-ups taking up space. Also wasn’t an option for booking on the home page for user one. User one also booked two different inbound and outbound airports, but the site corrected by alerting the user though a pop-up to prevent this issue.

I then conducted my own test then were a recruited a user to go through two airline websites. 

• British Airways
• TUI Airline

After this was done I was able to take further notes on this which then be added onto next section which would be affinity diagram.

Once all the research has been done we can now move onto the affinity diagram. At this stage we take all the research has been conducted and and write them on postit notes and organised them into relevant groups. To do this i got help from a friend who helped me organise and group these together.

Here all the notes are grouped in relevant groups, then this allows us to get more gradualar in groups then these groups can be organised into positive and negative. 

Here a customer journey map is created with all the information from affinity diagram the goal here is to

• Use the customer journey map to define the high-level steps in the journey.
• For each step, document the goals of the user, any positive interactions or pain points, and whether there were any behaviours the website or app was not facilitating.
• Assess whether each step of the experience was positive or negative. Where relevant, add some direct quotes from your customers to help bring the journey map to life.

Here I sketched out what the ideal flow would be taking in to consideration everything that i have learned in research stages of the design process the goals here were:

• Define the high-level booking flow for your new website.

• Depending on your case study, this will reflect booking a flight, a hotel stay or a rental car

• Address all the issues highlighted in your customer journey map

• Lay the groundwork on which you’ll build your designs in upcoming projects

Now that the user flow has been established then i moved on to do low fidelity sketches of what each screen design would look at. I went through many differnt iterations here before i came to the final designs here.

I then moved onto my medium fidelity diagrams then. This was created on figma, then allowed me to create a prototype of how each interaction would operate, then I could test this prototype then and make any changes needed to improve the proto type then.

LETS CONNECT

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