#2 Designing Travel Experiences with Andrej Kiripolsky
Recently, we started interviewing different members of the Kiwi.com Design Team to hear their stories. The first episode featured our Brazilian designer, Tales Ebner. In this second episode, we spoke to one of our UX Researchers, Andrej Kiripolsky.
Read on to learn how Andrej became interested in user experience and why he decided to join Kiwi.com. You’ll find out about his time spent working for the Russians and how his life has recently changed since he became a father.
Hey Andrej, thanks for taking the time to talk with me about your life, UX, young dad issues, etc…
Just a simple question to kick things off. How did you end up as a UX Researcher at Kiwi.com? What led you up to this point?
Before joining Kiwi.com, I spent a year at a UX consultancy firm in Russia, followed by two and half years in Human Factors Research in the aerospace industry. In my last job, I started to feel that the UX discipline was progressing super fast, and that I was being left behind. I decided to join Kiwi.com to get back into UX. Now, I can say that it was a very good decision.
Glad to hear that. How does Human Factors Research differ from UX Research?
This sounds like a good topic for a separate article 😃. If I were just to focus on my own experience, I would point out two things:
- Firstly, in my previous job, we literally went interaction by interaction when we examined the systems in the cockpit — no detail was too small. Here, we work on a much higher level of detail.
- Secondly, due to the sensitive domain in the aerospace industry where even the smallest mistake can have dramatic consequences, every outcome of our work was carefully observed. Here, the speed at which I can deliver results is emphasised much more. The technologies I worked on at my previous job might not take their first flight for another ten years, Here, it only takes a couple of weeks or even days for my work to come to fruition.
Yes, we can easily experiment and validate our concepts. It’s one of the great benefits of designing for the digital domain. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t care about the details or that we can’t cause big problems through our actions.
Sure we can, although these are still mostly troubles that happen on the ground, not in the air 🤓. One of the things I learned in aerospace is that you should always keep in mind the worst consequences that your decisions might lead to, and then do your best to avoid them.
So we know why you joined Kiwi.com, but why did you become a UX Researcher in the first place? Why not a designer?
Since I started in UX, I’ve always been more interested in the analytical side of things than the visual. This, combined with my research methodology background from doing a sociology minor somehow made me evolve smoothly into the UX Researcher role. But I also like designing. At Kiwi.com, I’ve had the opportunity to design a bit and it was awesome 😃.
What did you design?
I helped design one part of an internal system for our customer support. It is a really cool project and I enjoyed working on it.
What does your daily work consist of?
Recently, I’ve mostly been working on surveys and the one I’m working on now is pretty interesting. As you know, we have quite a lot of data about our customers. During our qualitative studies, we found that there’s a group of people who regularly use Kiwi.com (and other OTAs), but for various reasons, they do not buy tickets here. And so we know nothing about them. I designed a set of surveys that will help us to get to know these users better. Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to offer them something that will encourage them to book with us. Apart from that, I also do the other stuff that UX Researchers do, like usability testing and interviews.
Regarding usability testing and interviews, is there anything interesting you learned about our users that you never thought could be true or that you simply weren’t expecting?
Recently our designers experimented with the search form, especially the sequence of the input fields. During usability testing, it was interesting to see that most participants completely ignored our cool new sequence and just jumped from one field to another in a way that they were used to. It looked really cumbersome but the habit was just stronger. I did not expect such a behaviour, although it made perfect sense to me afterwards.
We have customers from all over the world and from many different cultures. How does this affect your work?
From this perspective, I find it more interesting to discuss the design of our internal tools. Even though our original customer service teams are still here in Czech Republic, the vast majority of our agents are now based in India, Indonesia, or the Philippines. And the differences are not just minor things like the date and time formats, but perhaps a completely different attitude towards work.
What do you mean by different attitude?
Here in the Czech Republic, the customer support (CS) job is generally a career start for young people. They might spend a few years in the role but it’s rare to see someone stay in that position for longer. In India, on the other hand, being a CS agent is a lifetime career. And this could result in having a completely different attitude to work and life needs. We need to take these implications into account when designing our tools. We are only in the very beginning of our research of this topic, but we’ve already realised that we might need to change the focus of our design by 180 degrees.
You previously worked as a researcher in Russia. Are there any differences between working at a Russian company compared to a Czech startup?
Yes, I worked in Moscow for a UX consultancy firm. I only spent one year there but I learned a lot. Even though Kiwi.com and the consultancy do completely different kinds of business, my work actually does not differ that much because the UX Research team here at Kiwi.com basically works as an internal agency.
What do you mean when you say that our UX Research team works as an internal agency?
It means that as a UX Researcher here, I mostly get requests for short-term projects from designers or product managers, just like how it works at an agency. Although, I am becoming more involved in some long-term projects too.
On a more personal note, you recently became a dad. Congratulations to you and your wife. Can you see any difference in your work life after having a daughter?
Thank you 😃 I would not say that my work life has been affected that much, at least not directly. But my personal life changed a lot. Some words have completely disappeared from my vocabulary (like free time). Other words have taken on a completely new and unexpected meaning (like sleep deprivation). But I can’t say that it was unexpected, and it’s completely worth it. The kid is just amazing. By the way, she is 6 months old today 😀
Congratulations, Andrej. And thank you very much for your time.
You can follow Andrej on these platforms:
🥝🥝🥝 If you’re interested in what we’re doing, follow the Kiwi.com Design Team on Medium, Instagram, Twitter, and Dribbble.
Stay tuned for our next edition of Designing Travel Experiences where we’ll be talking to the first-ever designer at Kiwi.com. He joined us way back when we used to be called Skypicker.
