BOOLE, the booking flight community
This project was part of my UX/UI Bootcamp at Ironhack Barcelona. The requirement was to create an MVP of a new mobile travel booking app that could generate revenue through fees associated with booking a flight. Considering that the market is mainly focused on price, an app must have some additional value to gain users.
And for the record, this project assumes that the world of traveling will be as it was before COVID-19.
Overview
What if corporate trips no longer have to be solely about attending an important meeting or participating in an industry conference? For many young professionals, corporate trips offer a great opportunity to extend a week of business into a weekend getaway.
Some years ago, mixing business travel with pleasure was rare. However, over the past recent years, and thanks to more flexible schedules, professionals are extending trips to include downtime for themselves.
This trend is booming, and the industry has been coined with the name ‘Bleisure’, which is a portmanteau of ‘business’ and ‘leisure’. It refers to “the activity of combining business travel with leisure time” (Wikipedia).
Looking to a 2018 study by Expedia Group Media Solutions, 60% of business trips morph into bleisure trips, including both domestic and international destinations. This growth partially stems from the younger generations — specifically Millennials and Generation Z.
My Role: UX /UI Designer
Duration: 1 week| Individual Design Project
Tools and Methods: Preliminary Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Interviews, Brainstorming, Paper Prototype, Wireframes, Interactive Prototype, Figma
Research
To empathize with users and to better understand their needs, I conducted 10 interviews with people from 29 to 42 years old that are frequent flyers.
I started my research by trying to find how people book a flight, how often they travel, how they decide on a destination, how much time they take to organize their travels, and how they find things to do.
With all my findings on hand, I organized them into an affinity diagram. Below are some of the main patterns I found.
The most revealing insight was that 7 out of 10 users take some extra time for themselves after a business trip. Here is where the idea of Bleisure started to take shape. Another interesting observation was that while having the privilege of traveling and discovering many places may be seen as a gift, these people often feel lonely during their travels.
Keeping all these ideas in mind, a question arises: How to make solo travels more meaningful, empowering, and fun?
Benchmarking
I selected several travel booking apps and analyzed them. My main goal was to understand better the business and spot the main features that they offer and also check their heuristics. The majority of my interviewees use Skyscanner, so I wanted to compare it with other apps on the market.
Having done the analysis, I concluded that Kayak is the most complete app among them. Consequently, I listed the features that are a ‘must’ for my users.
- Alliance filter, since my users are frequent flyers, they tend to prefer traveling with the same alliance in order to get price miles. Most of my users were focused on price but, on some occasions, they were willing to pay a bit more to get airline points.
- -+3 days booking, some of my users can be a bit flexible when traveling so this feature is a good fit for them.
- Luggage price, some of my users reported that the price of luggage was an addition that was not reflected in the price in some apps. This usually causes them a bad surprise when they are about to book and in consequence wastes a lot of their time because they must research more flights.
- No redirection to make booking payment, users experienced being charged fees for using credit cards for return flights bought through different websites.
Problem statement
“As a Bleisure traveler that often travels alone, I want to connect with other people”
Persona
Meet Sofia Prat, she is 32 years old, an Event Planner, and iOS user from Barcelona. “Imagine getting paid to attend the World Cup or the Olympics”.
She usually travels twice a month to oversee events that her agency is organizing. Because the events are usually very intense and she works overtime, whenever she can, she stays a couple of extra days to relax and enjoy the place.
She loves traveling but the downside of her travels is that she is always alone. She misses some human interaction and sharing the wonders she has around her.
This time, her agency is organizing a wedding in Palma de Mallorca. She is going to book a flight to coordinate the event and she is planning to take some extra days off to rest and discover the island. She immediately thinks that it is worth trying BOOLE as it will give her an opportunity to meet some interesting people to enjoy her free time with.
Business Goals
Boole is more than a travel booking app, it is a community of travelers that interact, meet, and exchange tips of restaurants, hotels, cities, and activities around the world.
Boole stands for reliable, modern, innovative, friendly, authentic and neat.
Researching a flight with Boole gives you an opportunity to connect with other travelers who are on the same flight. Once you purchase your ticket, and only if you want to make yourself visible to other users, you can click on their avatar, view their profile, and contact them.
Boole also lets you purchase flight tickets, check-in through your mobile, sync with your calendar, receive reminders, and more.
During this first stage, the revenue of the app will be based on fees from commissions of booking flights.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Check Boole interactive prototype here.
From the start
I designed the main user flow for booking a flight, and a secondary one for connecting with other travelers on the same flight. The secondary flow will connect with the main one, after buying the ticket.
I started building my low-fidelity prototype and gathered some insights after conducting usability tests. Testing allowed me to improve many aspects of my design.
Color Palettes
For the selection of the color palette, I considered the brand attributes of Boole and the psychology of color. As a result, I selected the following colors:
- Blue that stands for Trust;
- Orange for Friendliness; and
- Magenta for innovations
Once I selected the colors of the app, I started playing with different color variations of the same palette. I also tried various shapes for buttons and different layouts for other screens.
Iterations
Imagining how a travel booking app and a social app could merge wasn’t easy. In the beginning, I envisioned that the app could show Instagram pictures from the user profile. I substituted this feature in the second iteration with the ‘Recent destination’ and ‘Bucket List’ features to give more privacy to users. I also changed message icons from mails to a bubbles because some users pointed out that mail icons had a more passive feeling, while bubble icons gave an impression of immediate communication.
For the quick payment process, I added the ‘Back’ button, name on card, and payment details to give more transparency to the system.
iOS vs Android
From my research, I discovered that all my interviewees were iPhone users. For design reasons, this app will be very similar in both systems. But some minimum differences will be added, such as icons and navigation bar typical for android.
Conclusions and next steps
In my next steps, I would like to develop the social part of the app a bit more in depth while ensuring the privacy of the users. I would also like to further develop the following:
- Explore other types of revenue, such as advertising or booking hotels/activities.
- Improve the community feature, the forum.
- Add a report button to report any kind of abuse.
- Develop pop-ups with airport announcements, such as last calls, flight delays, gate announcements, etc.
- Explore adding a loyalty program.
