Side project for an airline booking app

Attempting to design a streamlined flight booking experience for a fictional US budget airline as a solo UX designer.

The brief

Many airlines booking apps are often well intentionally designed, but because the process can be pretty complex, the user can often become confused. I undertook my own project to look at common user pain points and address them head-on.

Solution

For me, it was great to understand that even the most simple functions in a flight booking process can easily be overlooked. The user research phase of this project helped to go deeper and take the time to carefully listen to each of the user’s pain points and frustrations to come up with a more simplified and straight-forward UX.

Mapping user frustrations

Mapping the customer journey helped me to depict the different stages a customer goes through when interacting with a booking application or website. I wanted to implement this into my study to completely understand the main flow that users follow when searching for and booking flights based on user interviews already performed with several users.

Building my own design library

I developed my own design system to define a strong visual identity for colours, typography and icon usage to help me to design a consistent UI.

Iterative design process

The app went through several iterations and A/B tests with my users to refine and improve the flow, but more critically address key points that came up during the research phase. The design is clearer and easier to navigate at any stage of the flow, and now it is easy and intuitive enough to know where to go if there are any misunderstandings.

Impact

What I feel went well: Working with Figma. This project really allowed me to hone my UI skills and get more experience with a crucial tool for design & prototyping.

What I feel could be improved: My research. I felt I understood user pain points but need to back up my points more, perhaps with different research processes and more varied research models. This is something I will continue to expand on.

Next project

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