Improving the flow of a flight booking application
Designing a more streamlined flight booking system for FlyUS
Background
Many airline booking apps are often well intentionally designed, but because the process can be pretty complex, from everyday people I have spoken to, they can often become confused. I undertook my own project to look at common user pain points and address them head-on. This began with detailed research into existing solutions, usability testing, surveys, and in-depth interviews to uncover the most pressing problems. Finally, I wanted to validate my research by developing my own solution into a final mobile app and to hone my UI skills using Figma. A
As part of a commitment to designing a better UX for flight booking apps, I took it upon myself to act as the lead UX designer and manage the overall UX end-to-end process of empathy, research, ideation, and user testing to develop a more improved solution.
Understanding the market
I wanted to plan a holiday to Dubai, so I began by conducting a competitive analysis of how other airlines managed their booking process with flights from Vienna to Dubai. I chose Austrian Airlines, Emirates, and Skyscanner, two of which are the most common airlines for flights to this destination. Skyscanner is an aggregator where you can choose/select flights from multiple different airlines. Each site solved the situation slightly differently but Emirates had a similar and consistent approach.
Speaking to users of travel/flight booking apps
I wanted to interview a small pool of people whom I know travel quite regularly to try to understand the various stages taken when booking a flight. I spent time with 6 different people aged between 25 and 45 and asked them to walk me through each individual step when booking a flight.
Results analysis with Affinity Mapping
After my research, I began with affinity mapping to piece together the main parts of the puzzle. It was at this stage that I discovered that although in 70-80% of cases, most airline apps were doing a great job, there is still room for improvement.
Mapping out the customer journey
I also wanted to draw up a customer journey map to depict the different stages a customer goes through when interacting with the 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. An example of this can be seen below and later helped me develop a better user flow.
Suggestions & Redesigns
The app went through several iterations and A/B tests with my users to ensure the flow worked, but more critically address key points that came up during the research phase. Not only is the design clearer and easier to navigate but at any stage of the flow, it should be easy and intuitive enough to know where to go if there are any misunderstandings. Furthermore, a more intuitive date picker feature was integrated to make selecting a date easier for the user.
Outcomes & lessons learned
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 was also a good chance for me to go deeper and take the time to carefully listen to each of the user’s pain points and frustrations.
What I feel went well was working with Figma. This project really allowed me to hone my UI skills and get more experience with software that I want to work with and continue to get better at.
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 am interested in continuing to expand on.
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