UX Design Case Studies

Flight Booking Process UX Case Study

Fly UX – Desktop App

Goal: To provide excellent user experience by effortless flow through the website while searching, selecting and booking flights.
Client: Fly UX is a startup airline company preparing to make a significant success in the world market. Finding users’ satisfaction-factor very important, they look to ensure a stress-free experience within the booking process.

Contents

01 RESEARCH >

Objectives: Gathering information about competitors (Ryanair, Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, Skyscanner), collecting structured and unstructured data, learning about users goals, context, behaviours

02 ANALYSIS >

Objectives: Understand research insights and articulate the problems in both flights search and booking process through collected data analyses

03 DESIGN >

Objectives: Sketching screens and screen states, creating information architecture, defining interactions, navigation and high level flow for primary use case

04 PROTOTYPING & WIREFRAMING >

Objectives: Build a high-fidelity prototype and compile wireframe documentation on future Fly UX desktop app

01 RESEARCH

Techniques: Competitive Benchmarking, Online Survey, In-depth Interview and Usability Test

1.1. Competitive Benchmarking

Comparing and analysing three airlines and one travel-related competitor, with particular focus on home page layout design and booking process to evaluate areas that could be improved and detect conventions useful to adapt. The outcome was a very detailed 32-page document describing all the patterns, pros and cons spotted in the booking process.

1.2. Online Survey

A 10-question online survey helped me to learn more about users’ goals and behaviours when planning and booking a trip. The central objective was finding out the following: what are they trying to do, how they do it, what (if anything) is preventing them from doing it and is there anything they would like to change about their favourite booking website? This way, I managed to gather both qualitative and quantitative data with some useful in-depth insights.

1.3. Usability Test

The best way to get high-quality feedback on a product and level of user experience involved is to observe people using it. Together with an in-depth interview conducted prior to each of the three separate usability tests, the opportunity to watch and listen to real people in person while booking their flights provided me with a lot of useful qualitative data. Also, I’ve learned a lot about their habits, reasons and different backgrounds (e.g. finances, travel duration, comfort, etc.) they would consider when making decisions during the process.

I find this hard to read. There are too many little blocks of information.
Kasia

When traveling with friends, we would first agree on the date and flight and then all book independently because it’s easier. That works best.
Carmel

‘London England Area’ doesn’t communicate well as ‘London, All Airports’
Andrea

02 ANALYSIS

Techniques: Affinity Diagram and Customer Journey Map

2.1. Affinity Diagram

The affinity diagram comes as a critical point to review all of the research phases conducted so far and to put the structure on many qualitative data collected. It will represent a full analysis of what I’ve learned so far and what knowledge or best practices to apply while designing Fly UX booking process. Post-it notes came as a research summary representing still messy and unstructured data related to users’ primary and secondary goals, pain points, context, behaviours and mental models. Organising them into truly logical groups under meaningful names supplied precious information and answers needed to proceed further to the design stage right after completing the customer journey map.

2.2. Customer Journey Map

Ultimately, creating a customer journey map means putting even more structure on the analysis of raw research data and translating it into a structured document. It will indicate how goals, behaviours, context, pain points and mental models change during the process by grading the level of overall UX within each phase as: Very Positive, Positive, Average, Slightly Negative or Very Negative. My research showed a disappointing level of user experience when it comes to flights selection (Slightly Negative), seats selection (Very Negative) and airline’s persistent attempts to up-sell extras and add-ons (Very Negative). The rest of the process was rated positive, which still leaves a massive 33% of negative emotions to be converted.

Click on Image to Enlarge

03 DESIGN

Techniques: High-Fidelity Flow Diagram, Interaction and Navigation Design Sketches

3.1. High Level Flow Diagram

I will define the high-level flow on Fly UX website with main focus on our primary use case process – booking flights. This flowchart displays options and activities of the booking system I’m preparing to design.