People book airline tickets online because of its convenience — they can look for flights in advance,compare different airline offerings, pay easily with their cards, check airfare deal websites and easily view flights available with corresponding cost.
So allowing users have a great user experience on your flight booking platform is key to business performance.
For this case study, I interviewed different classes of users which consisted of busy professionals,top executives,people who book on other peoples behalf and holiday travelers who frequently book air tickets online, observed how they interacted with various airline booking platforms and noticed some patterns which led to some inferences
Both classes of users want to easily find flights available and checkout without having to stress themselves digging through a ton of information — they simply want relevant information displayed in a way that can easily be understood.
Observing people interact with Air Peace booking website, it took a while for them to fill the ‘book a flight’ form on the website and even longer time to scan through the information on flights available.
Hypothesis
Air Peace vision to “to be ever dependable through the creation of seamless connections and network options for our domestic, regional and international markets” is not portrayed to users because of the not so good experience with the booking website and for Air Peace to make users ever depend on their services, they first have to worm their way into the user’s heart by giving them a great experience from booking even before users interface physically with the airline.
“You don’t have to change who you are, you have to be more of who you are.” — Sally Hogshead
Objectives of this case study
- Identify pain points users have while booking on Air Peace.
- Propose design solutions and validate them.
The Process
Following the 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process I started out this case study by first interviewing a number of users and carried out a usability test watching users interact with the Air Peace booking website in order to find out issues they face, gain a clear understanding of the problem I am trying to solve and to define the problem statement. This process helped me to center the proposed solution towards the users and I ended by testing the solution to validate its effectiveness towards addressing the users pain points.
Problem Statement
How might we make it easier for a user to find flights available and book flights easily?
Personas
Based on interviews I created a persona for a typical user
Persona
Name: Olamide Caxton
Lagos based communications designer
Behaviors
- She works 9–5 as a communications designer
- She works as a freelance wedding photographer on weekends
- She uses ride booking platforms for her daily commute
- She is always time conscious
- Shops frequently online
Demographics
- Age: 28
- Occupation: Photography
- Lives in Ikoyi, Lagos
- Income: 350,000 Naira
- Personality: Creative, Adventurous, Busy
Needs & Goals
- She travels outside Lagos every weekend for freelance jobs and needs to book flights ahead
- Doesnt like to get bored with too many details
- Needs to be able to make quick decisions
Persona
Name: Abdulahmeed Olabi
Abuja based Entrepreneur
Behaviors
- He works 8–5 and runs his Internet service provider company
- Drives himself to work everyday
- Reads news blogs every morning
- Stays updated with tech trends
Demographics
- Age: 39
- Occupation: Entrepreneur
- Lives in Garki, Abuja
- Income: 750,000 Naira
- Personality: Goal oriented, Focused, Busy
Needs & Goals
- He frequently travels outside Abuja for meetings in other parts of the country
- Loves to take care of details by himself
Competitive Analysis
An analysis of other airline booking was carried out to
- Understand where the Air Peace website stands in relation to other flight booking sites
- Inform the design process
- Know the strengths and weaknesses of other flight booking sites
- Have reliable evidence when making product changes
Evaluating other flight booking sites (Arik Air, Dana Air, Medview, Aero) who are the 4 major competitors of Air Peace, the following analysis were derived
On the landing page on Aero, users can see quickly see an overview of flight prices to major flight routes within Nigeria, similar features are present on Medview but on Air Peace, this information isn’t present on the landing page only information about flight routes are present but this is not quite visible to the user.
This feature if well implemented on the Air Peace website would help capture a user’s attention and gives an overview of flight routes and what flights to popular or different routes cost.
Air Peace allows users to select what currency to pay in, this feature is not available on most of the competitor websites.
All flight booking sites have similar forms — interviewing and watching users book a flight on each platform I could deduce that the forms are monotonous and the description of some fields requires a lot cognitive load to understand and give input.
On Air Peace booking form, not enough descriptions are given to form fields (an example is the field for departure date and arrival dates, although an icon that signifies a calendar affords a user to know that a date is the required input but placing two dates side by side confuses the user)
Through the booking process it would be great to have a progress tracker to inform the user of how many steps are required or left to book a ticket.This would be a nice addition to the Air Peace booking process and for a good user experience.
Analysis from competitor sites and Air Peace website shows that
- White space around forms and other elements on the page would make it easier for users to see information and reduce cognitive load.
- Adding possible booking cost for flight routes would give a user adequate information on what flight tickets costs for that day or period.
- Visuals on flight routes would make booking more interactive.
- Having a progress tracker in the booking process would make it easier for a user to know what steps are left to booking a ticket.
- Use of cards or other components would make information on flights available easy to visualize.
Competitor booking websites
Use Cases
Use Case 1
Book a flight
Actor
Admin Officer
Basic Flow
On Tuesday an admin officer tries to book a flight for a top management staff who is scheduled to travel to Benin for a meeting on Thursday. She shuffles between airline booking websites to find flights available for Thursday morning.She has a lot to do for the day and deoesnt want to start scanning through a lot of flight information-she just needs information relevant to her.
Use Case 2
View flights cost
Actor
Busy Professional
Basic Flow
An induction ceremony for a professional body is scheduled to be held in 2 months time. An accounts officer is among the new inductees.He tries to view cost for various airlines with the hope of booking a flight ahead of time.
Prototype
Here is the link to the prototype showing booking process Air Peace prototype
THANK YOU :)
