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Air Lux booking experience

Using the UX design process to improve the customer experience throughout the airline booking experience, to give a new startup a competitive edge against existing airlines.

Discipline:
UX design
Project:
UX Design Institute Diploma

Project goal

The goal was to create a competitive advantage for a startup airline new to the airline industry, by identifying the existing problems faced by users in the booking journey for short haul European flights, and finding solutions to make a more joyful experience.

The UX design process

The process began with research to gain a full understanding of the scenario, followed by analysis to define the problem. This would then 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.

95%
Of respondents booked some form of luggage
""
They try to sell you things you don't want. It can be very confusing.
USER JOURNEY:
Airline homepage
Search results
Fare selection
Additional services
Checkout
""
It's tricky, they always try to hide the prices – its a lot more money than I had originally expected.
70.6%
Don't normally pay for their seat preference

Research findings

User goals
For the short haul, European market, users only wanted flights and did not require other services, such as hotels, transport or events. Trips were booked for budget holidays, or visiting family and friends.
Context
Prior to commencing the booking journey of their chosen flight, users would exhaustively search to find the cheapest deals that aligned with their itinerary.
Motivations
Price was a priority factor and users wanted to keep cost low. Only basic luggage upgrades were prioritised.

Market opportunity

Pain points
The user experience was generally well-optimised, but frustrations peaked at the fare selection and additional services sections, where it became evident that maximising revenue was the airlines' main focus. Three key issues were identified:
  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. Confusing luggage options.
    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. Upselling of additional services.
    Users were presented, some times continuously, with an array of additional services, even though not required or previously declined.
These areas created an opportunity to gain an advantage in the market over competitors by creating a user-centric solution.
The price quoted is only true for one passenger, one way - after the cost multiplies.
Scale and colour influence the user into selecting an undesired action.
Even if declined, it was common to see the same offerings pop-up.

Solutions

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.

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