Air Lux booking experience

The goal was to improve the user journey for booking a short haul European flight. This began at a users arrival on the airlines homepage, through to creating a search, viewing the results, selecting and customising a flight, then proceeding to checkout and pay.

Process

The process began with research to gain a full understanding of the scenario, followed by analysis to define the problem. This would help to form a hypothesis for a solution; that could be designed, prototyped and tested.

Research methodologies

Research methods included competitive benchmarking, customer surveys, user interviews and user testing.

1. Lack of pricing clarity. Airlines wouldn't always show the full cost of the booking criteria, resulting in unexpected price growth. Deceptive UX patterns and aggressive upselling would make it difficult for users to make clear decisions.
   
2. Luggage. Airlines would offer different fare bundles with the visual design emphasising more expensive packages. It was difficult to understand what was included, and impossible to select single items.
   
3. Additional services. Users were presented, some times continuously, with an array of additional services, even though not required.
   

Prioritising high frequency use cases for seat selection

Common industry convention required users to select their seat, at a cost, or proceed with a freely assigned seat.

However, research showed however that 70.6% of respondents would not pay for their seat preference, but due to of a lack of prioritisation, and in attempt to make more sales, extra steps were included that frustrated the majority of users.

The solution would reverse this pattern and highlight an automatically assigned free seat. An option to change the seat at a cost would add extra steps to the journey for edge case users.

Now, the booking journey would respect the time and decisions of the user and shorten the journey of high frequency use cases by 30%.

A booking journey thats relevant to the user

No extra services would be offered for before and after departure - research showed users would prefer to book these services elsewhere. Flight customisations would instead be optimised and prioritised:

1. Additional services.
   The new customer journey would focus on converting sales and would only offer additional service as an option before checkout. This would preserve the time and goodwill of the majority of users, whilst still offering the services for edge cases.
   
2. Luggage.
   To meet user needs, luggage items would be sold individually, and would be customisable for each person and flight if required. The product tiles would display how many items the users were allowed, the weight, size and where it would be stowed.
   

Cost and progress transparency

With pricing being a key issues, a flight itinerary module would remain fixed throughout the booking journey to counter existing frustrations and to give users more control by:

1. Acting as a progress marker, helping guide users through the journey and manage expectations;
   
2. Allowing users to see and understand the cost breakdown of their trip, customisations, and the total cost throughout.