A UX project reimagining the flight-booking experience on iOS. Through user research, journey mapping and usability testing, I identified opportunities to simplify the booking process and help users make more informed decisions. I translated these insights into user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity UI and an interactive iOS prototype.
Booking a flight can be daunting, especially for holiday planning. I personally feel the pressure with all the considerations: family and children, weather and geopolitics, and of course budget. And the user can be anyone from individuals to families and groups, and even business travel. Teens through to elderly members of our community.
The goal was to reimagine the flight booking process from start to seat selection, empowering users to make more informed choices.
Now, this study project had some restrictions due to the global pandemic. The irony was reinventing travel experiences whilst we all couldn’t. So, I had to focus locally during the research and validation phases.
During this course, we were given a make-believe company called FlyUX, along with logos to incorporate the company brand and identity into our completed prototypes. I focused on iOS and web. The time constraints were 12 months.
We were tasked with reimagining the flight booking process through to the seat selection stage, helping users make more informed purchases. Pain-points discovered:
For this project, I employed the waterfall process: research, analysis, design, prototyping and validation before deployment.
Research involved benchmarking against existing products, surveys and local usability testing to gain insights and support design decisions. Competitive benchmarking compared products and technologies on the market to identify digital conventions, examples to emulate and areas to avoid. For this project, we analysed flight providers and a flight aggregation website.
User testing involved connecting with real users both in person and remotely. This provided valuable insights through their visual cues, helping us understand their journeys, pain points and areas for improvement.
Surveys were created using SurveyMonkey® to gather anonymous feedback from a global audience.
Analysis involved using Miro to group data and create a journey map. This map highlighted opportunities and touch-points along the customer journey.
My focus for this project was on new users booking flights and using active defaults like privacy and location settings. I mapped out user decisions and interactions in a user flow artefact for reference. As we progressed into the design phase, I continued to create more artefacts.
Grouping data into an affinity diagram using Miro.
User-flow for use case: New users booking flights with active defaults like privacy and location settings.
During the design phase, I created low-fidelity sketches of screen states based on user flow. This allowed me to confirm adjustments to the user journey without significant investment in digital designs.
Influenced by insights, for example — increasing the number of pets joining a flight with a simple plus button proved challenging due to differing rules and regulations across countries. Since pets are living beings, I opted to house them with people rather than miscellaneous items and provided further information via a link.
My design incorporated Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and innovative AR technology.
I used Sketch and Principle for Mac to create an interactive prototype for designing screen states.
Following the creation of interactive prototypes, I conducted usability and A/B tests with the candidates used for benchmarking.
Lo-fi sketches of FlyUX Flight app screen states.
Lo-fi sketch to Hi-fi design highlighting the considerations based on insights.
I completed this project and earned a Professional Diploma in UX Design. If I could revisit it, I’d redesign the Fare Type and Date Selection screens. For Fare Type, I’d present all data clearly on a single page instead of requiring users to swipe back and forth through a carousel. Similarly, for Date Selection, I’d incorporate the new calendar treatment with search results displayed in a list below the calendar. This feature was later added in iOS 15.
Final FlyUX Flight app screen states on iOS.