Our Personalisation Starts Here
Say hello to Upcoming Flights and Online Check-in
Hi guys!! What’s up?!!
It’s been a while since my last post, and this time I’d like to share about a bit of my job at tiket.com.
When I joined tiket.com, my first task was to give a heuristic evaluation on the general design. So for like 3 days, I explored the app and the web. Searching for bad designs, inconsistencies, weird flows and all that. Because of this, I noticed that we had only touched the surface of traveling applications.
Back then, we only catered the basic needs for traveling. Unlike our competitors who have way more products than us, we still have many opportunities. We can add cool products, cool features here and there without the fear of cluttering the design.
“How can we connect with our users?”
That is, the million dollar question. Of course, there are a lot of answers that might be suitable to your company needs, but one of the way to connect with users is, as you might have guessed from the title, through personalisation. Here are our 2 main reasons why.
1. It fits our product vision
Well, this might not be the exact words. But, our product vision is somewhere along the line of:
“To be the most reliable travel assistant and empower people by traveling the world.”
We want to make a change. We want to be something more than just a regular Online Travel Agent. We want to inspire people, to make them explore the world. From that point on, we started to think. We tried to make a change.
And do you know what’s better than Online Travel Agent? I’ll give you a clue, it’s not that far from Online Travel Agent. You just need to tweak the Agent a bit. Can you guess what that is?
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Still no clue?
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9 words, starts with an “a”, end with a “t”.
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It’s Assistant!!
And what’s the difference between Agent and Assistant? To put it simply, an agent is like a robot. You will get what you ask for. Nothing asked, nothing gained. An assistant on the other hand, will care about you. Even when you ask for nothing, an assistant might be able to give you something. It cares about you.
2. We want to create a new experience
This is a challenge to tiket.com as a company. But, this is a challenge especially to the product team who have the responsibility of creating and maintaining the UX of the product. We want to be different than the other OTA. So, as long as it fits the product vision, why not? It’s worth to try.
And what’s an assistant without a personality? 😜
Meet our mascot, t-man!! The end product of our branding team blood, sweat and tears. Say hello to t-man!
You might have seen t-man in some of our ads. Or maybe if you are in Jakarta and you commute regularly using the MRT, chances are you have seen t-man.
You can say that starting from now on, t-man will be some kind of our spokesperson when we want to tell you about things. So, once again, say hi to t-man!!
Now that you’ve found out the whys, here’s the hows.
Finding what to use
There’s a reason why it’s named personalisation. Personalisation can be started when you know something about the person, the user. In other words, it needs data. So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s put aside our unregistered users. Since we can assume that we know nothing about them.
What do we know about our users? It’s a given that registered users will give us data at least about their email or mobile number. But, how can we cater to this registered users? Do we know anything else about them? Aha, we have their orders!! We know what they have bought.
The idea
How might we use this order to help our users? After some desk research and talking to some people, we know that usually people are excited to travel.
Traveling has their own magic. Starting from simply going home to the place you know best or visiting new places. Going domestic for similar taste or international to experience new culture. Visiting famous places or finding hidden gem. You name it. Traveling is something that you are anticipating. Something that you want to enjoy.
Going along with that, we want to try to help our users to maintain the excitement of traveling. And how do we do that? Since traveling is something that people are excited about, we assumed that people won’t forget that they have to go. So, a simple reminder should do. Take a look at our super duper early sketch of the reminder.
Main functions still reigns at the throne. But, directly below the main functions, the personalisation starts. Put first thing first, and there we have it. The reminder. We also put suggestions that we thought would help users “complete” their order. But for now, the mix and match suggestions and the helpful articles will have to wait. That’s another story 😺
Did you notice the For You menu at the bottom navigation bar? It also contributes to the reminder. The original concept of the For You is the more advanced version of personalisation. At home, there’s the reminder, but that’s it. Since we want to give more to the users, we brainstormed once again, thinking about what else can we give to our users.
If at home users can only see their next order, now we give them the ability to interact with their order. We tried to list down all of their tickets in a timeline. This way, users can make sense from all of the tickets they bought. They see it as a schedule, as an itinerary.
What if the users only bought a ticket, not a bunch of them? Well, the idea was users could create simple tasks to be added to the itinerary. But then, it’s not personalised anymore. It’s customised. Should we continue pursuing this idea? Is there another way?
Why limit yourself? Why not both?
Can we combine the ideas? Can we put the reminder and the itinerary together? Yes, yes we can.
Combining the reminder and the itinerary, we got a reminder that users can interact with. But, how can users interact with them? Is there a pain point that users have to do after the purchase?
Usually users have to go print their ticket, go to the airports, and exchange it with boarding pass while also checking-in. There’s just so much things to do right? How can we help users with their journey?
Some airlines have their ticketing machine and check-in machine. It definitely helps users and at the same time lessen the airline’s officers’ burden. But still, users like to do it when the deadline is near and it’s not uncommon to see long queue at the machines.
Well reminder, we have found you a soulmate. Its name is online check-in.
Interactive Reminder
Now, users can tap on the reminder and see their flights detail. For selected airlines (Garuda, Citilink, Sriwijaya, Lion Air, Wings Air, Batik Air, and Malindo Air), users also have the option to check-in online. See the how to on our Instagram video.
In shorts, all you need to do is scroll a bit at tiket.com app to find your flight. Tap it, read the TnC, and select seat (if available). That’s it, you’ve checked-in!! No more worries, no more queueing. Maybe some of you have tried it in Eid to avoid the traffic at the airport? 😉
Well I guess that’s it. Last but not least, if you are interested to join the product team (UID, UXD, UXR, UXW, and PM, don’t hesitate to send your CV + portofolio to product@tiket.com. Or, if you want to ask something first, you can reach me at william.hartono@tiket.com :)
