What are the Design Patterns of Skyscanner?

Alice Raine, PhD
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

A Scotland company known for their aggregating best travel fare, Skyscanner upholds a simplistic and fresh style.

As designers, we seen design differently that our the people who use our products. This can be both an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Designers see the spaces and structure of a website. While users may have a purpose to complete a single task, designers much understand our user flow in multiple experiences. This is why we need user testing the be reminded of the context of each individual user.

Despite how we see designs, in User Experience designs and users alike maintain a common visual language. As designers, we call this “design patterns”. If you are not a designer, you may already recognize it as common sense by now.

Where are the design patterns in Skyscanner?

Tabs. While these tabs may seem obvious to you now, this is an example of a design patter that have been repeated through best practices and overtime has become a standard.

More examples are . . .

Cards. You may have grown accustom to clicking on images which bring you to another page. This is an example of cards.

Dropdown. There many be different styles of dropdown menus, but this example has been adopted over time and is another standard.

Gestalt. When items are grouped together they are seen as a “unified whole”. In this image you can see three separate items.

Proximity. Describes when elements are placed in close proximity together, they appear to be related. The negative space between them creates the impression that these each have separate meanings.

Color. Skyscanner maintains their brand by keeping a calm color palette which is important when booking flights and hotels could be a stressful process. Their call-to-action and loading animation is consistently the same color green looking it simple for people to understand which are action focused areas.

Conclusion

Regardless of the product or service it is essential for designers to remember that the people who use our products and services have a different perspective than we do as designers. Services like Skyscanner work because they are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but continue using the same design patterns that have become part of the norm. While it is still important to be innovation in our designs, it is a first priority for our designs to be functional and effective.

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