SKY
Designing a desktop airline website
SKY
Certification project
April 2022
This is a project assignment as part of the completion of my UX Design Certification from UX Design Institute. It consisted in designing a desktop airline website by going through the whole design process. The user flow goes from filling a search form until selecting a seat.
Research
Different research methods were used to identify what potentially works and does not for an airline website user. The research methods were assigned by the institute.
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I started with a competitive benchmark. The objective of this exercise was to identify four websites, go through the booking a flight user flow and pick what works and does not from my point of view as UX Designer. One of them had to be a travel aggregator website.
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It was interesting to see the similarities and differences about how the selected airlines define their "best" possible way to accomplish a user goal, in this case booking a flight.
The next step was to conduct a usability test on 2 different airline websites. Some key findings from the
users were:
Another research method used during this project was online survey. The purpose of it was to identify key findings from a user perspective that would help me make design decisions. One of the questions asked in the survey was "What would you change about the last website you used to book a flight?", find below some responses:
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"I would add a connection map updated with COVID restrictions"
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"Pre-fill my preferences, be smarter in the way showing options"
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"When something is blocked, state why and give indication on what to do to adjust"
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"I do not like to have to search for the things I need"
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"A more logical setup how to find things"
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"Creating a good form to fill out claims"
Analysis
Once I had documented all the findings from the competitive benchmarking, online survey, and usability test, I created an affinity diagram to help me out group the findings. This tool helped me identify areas for improvement and keep focus on what is important for the users.
Another technique used to analyse the findings was the creation of a customer journey map. As I had findings from different users I tried to build the customer journey map around the main pain points for all and what was found as "common" mental models. This could be something positive or negative.
Design
Based on all the findings shown above, I narrowed my focus into 2 areas for potential improvement of the booking a flight user flow:
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Improve information provided: I learned that the majority of the users want more details about their bookings. For instance, the number of nights/days, low fare calendar, what is included in the fare classes, etc.
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Improve actionability: The tested websites lacked of a good indication of where the user was creating some confusion about "what my next step is".
Flow diagram for desktop
Sketch of landing page
After sketching, I created a medium fidelity prototype which showcases how to book a flight from the search form until the passenger seats are selected.
Wireframes
Below a couple of examples of the created wireframes:
