Improving the experience of booking a flight — A UX case study
Booking a flight with a mobile phone was the theme I chose as part of an exercise from the online course I took at The Gymnasium. My goal for this project is to find a specific customer, discover what they need, how I can improve the experience they deserve while booking a flight.
To guide me through the process, I’m using the Design Thinking methodology. Fly with me on this journey from conception to the final design destination.
EMPATHIZE
I interviewed 3 Brazilians (users) between 20–35 years old, from Social Class B and C, who want to travel to Europe on vacations with a budget around 500 euros. They have a flexible time but want to stay at least 1 week, if they get direct flights is always a must for them.
After researching with them to figure out their journey, I realized their needs and pain points when they were planning a flight for an international destination from Brazil to Europe. All observed users tried checked 3 different websites; Kayak, Skyscanner and KLM.
As a result of the above-mentioned user research, I found ten main points between the users' goals and problems they encountered.
Five User Goals
- Find the Best Price
- Find the Best Day and Time
- Get direct Flights
- Find a Trustworthy website
- Find the best Airlines, with accessible prices
Five User Problems
- The apps were not clear about the necessary information to fill in the forms
- Request to download the app when the user is searching online on their mobile. They aren’t interested in downloading the app
- Didn’t keep the full price
- Redirected to another website in another language
- There were Lots of Advertisement on the website
DEFINE
Based on the results of my research I could define my Persona trying to summarize all the information I got in one sentence. I did this to make it easier to build my persona and give a focus during the rest of my process.
“A Brazilian looking for Flights to Europe.”
IDEATE
After observing and noting the difficulties the users had during my user research, I figured out that they had problems navigating through the websites on their mobile phones and finding the best-suited prices. Thanks to this I created the User Story to understand the behavior and thought the process of my users.
User Story
Paula is planning her next vacation. She is checking at the travel websites for tickets, but she is feeling confused thanks to the overload of information. When she accessed the BRATICKETS, she can see suggestions on Home Page to help her and search for desired destinations. Paula can search a specific date and see prices for the previous and next days. Then she can select the flight and desired extras, a single flow with multiple steps in order to make it easier and helping her to finish the booking.
With the above-mentioned points and researching other competitors, I analyzed and designed my first rough sketches.
With this, I then create a Customer Flow to visualize and be able to create all sketches to prototype it later. I first added the booking tickets steps, building the core principle of the website, and later create other possible flows.
PROTOTYPE
For this stage, I develop a Low-Fidelity wireframe based on my Sketches and the User flow. To ensure a solid design focused on the user needs I always looked back on my previous researches and results.
For example, I tried to show suggestions from Brazil to Europe, with the best prices to facilitate the user and helping them choose a destination.
TEST
For this phase, I tested the wireframe with four different users, and this is what I learned:
- Design a better home page (Check-in; Travel Status; My Flight) aren’t clear.
- Add suggestions on the homepage for flights with cheap prices
- Add more payment options
- Add action when the user clicks on another payment option
- Design better the Flight selection, because the user was confusing when they were selecting the flight.
- Add colors to indicate better selections and prices
- Redesign the page to make it easy to see the cheapest price.
- Make it easier to understand the extra and to select it.
IMPLEMENT
For this step, I worked on the final design of my project using all the feedback I got it on the first research and the Usability Test.
You can see below the result of my design and the description of each one, but first I want to emphasize two ideas that came up in the process that I tried to implement in the designs.
First, I created a menu trying to avoid the “hamburger” solution, and inside this, I added an “Alert Users” feature, the idea is for users to search and be alerted about the low prices for the destination they want to go.
On the second screen, I created a type of Bar Graph to show the best prices in a clear way to the user, using for this the calendar icon for date selection
DESIGN
Below you can check the screens and the improvements descriptions:
You can check the prototype below:
TAKE AWAY
With this project I learned a lot about the user experience it’s needed when a user is trying to find a flight with the current solutions. I try to understand the user’s way of working when they are finding a ticket. I followed the user through the current steps, from searching, checkout, and until confirmation. Current solutions have long and confusing processes which don’t help the user experience.
The best results and prices are the most important aspect of their decision making while trying to buy a ticket. Being transparent and truthful is a key element for the target audience, especially for Brazilians. I tried to focus the name of the application and the home page to target them.
Although there is still a long way in perfecting this and solving all the problems, I think that my first draft improves the most important issues that I found during my testing. Of course, another Usability testing to validate and improve the solutions I presented in this article would be a great next step. Presenting information in a less and a better way to bring more assertive search results to the user is always key in improving the user experience.
