VOYAGER
MOBILE APP & SERVICE DESIGN FOR FREQUENT FLYERS
With growing connectivity and falling return fares, the demand
for frequent air travel has grown exponentially. This is the story
about my in-depth research on Frequent Flyers which helped me
identify a business opportunity and how I came up with
a solution to address it
CLIENT
Gadrags Academy
Travel
SERVICES
TOOLS
Project Management
Research & Strategy
UX & Service Design
Testing & Prototyping
Shachi Kaul
Daryl Lee
INDUSTRY
TEAM
Interview, CI
Heuristic Analaysis
Affinity Mapping
Axsure, Invision
Sketch
IN SUMMARY
Using lean and various research methods,
I gathered insight into how a mobile and service design solution could help frequent flyers to travel efficiently with minimum time wastage.
Key insights from our research helped us find a business opportunity and define the key features our solution would withhold.
Along with service design solutions, a clickable prototype was used to test the scenario of our primary persona. In it, the user could get predictive and intuitive information to avoid time wastage generally & during flight delays.
VIEW PROTOTYPE
Old booking number not required. Won't remember
the number
MY ROLE
UX LEAD
I lead the UX work from project management to client interactions and producing all the major deliverables for Voyager. I was responsible for the experience strategy of the design solutions. I partnered with Daryl to uncover insights and translate them into features that address customer needs and motivations. I created frameworks and prototypes to share the vision of the design concepts.
CHALLENGE
DESIGN SOLUTION IN 2 WEEKS
In a limited period of time, our team was required to undertake research on Frequent Flyers, understand their motivations, behaviour patterns and frustrations they face while travelling. We were also required to identify a business opportunity and come up with a solution to address it in the form of a mobile app.
While doing our research and usability testing we realised that getting across frequent flyers to interview them or take surveys would be a task as they are hard to identify and usually short on time.
APPROACH
END-TO-END EXPERIENCE
Since the project was more research focused, for design and development, we opted for a lean approach which emphasised rapid sketching, prototyping, user feedback and design mockups.
Flying is a very individualistic, hence we decided to straight away focus on understanding our user’s behaviour and attitude towards flying frequently. While deep-rooted in research, we realised that flying as an experience is very service focused, hence we decided to not limit our selves by a digital solution, but see it with respect to the whole experience.
While deep-rooted in research, we realised that flying is a very service focused experience, hence we decided
to not limit ourselves by a digital solution, but view it from the point of view of an end-to-end experience.
"
"
DISCOVERY
The discovery phase was a high‐intensity effort that allowed us to define our project plan , understand our client's vision,
look into our competitors, and begin research into frequent flyers needs, behaviours and pain‐points.
Flying and travelling being very individualistic, it was imperative that we dive deep into understanding our users ‘Why’. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the easiest for us to get through frequent flyers as they are usually short on time. Yet, We managed to conduct 18 interviews with people around the world. It was evident from our first few interviews that there is clear difference in the way old and young frequent flyers travel.
INTERVIEWS
Clear difference in the way old and young frequent flyers travel
At the right time, my partner, daryl decided to go to Sydney airport and observe travellers behaviour patterns.
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
To back our research with numbers we looked to surveys undertaken by Forbes and SITA, both in 2015 to gauge what people were saying and to understand users motivations and pains towards flying.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
FORBES SURVEY-2015 BY OLIVER WYMAN - 460 GLOBAL TRAVELLERS
Air travel irritants for global frequent travellers
SITA SURVEY-2015 -1140 TRAVELLERS ACROSS USA
Passenger profiles in USA
Passenger demand for new services at Airport in USA
KEY INSIGHTS FROM USER RESEARCH
Flyers aim for
well planned
travelling
Flyers don't
welcome any
hurdles
Use of tech
for travel efficiency
Flyers dislike
long waiting times
Lack of info
during flight delays
Dislike
standing in
long queues
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Once were confident about our collected data and insights, we wanted to understand the competitor landscape and the current market approach towards frequent flyers. We looked at 3 major competitors:
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KAYAK
-
Focus on booking & planning
-
Gives you the best rates
-
Trip organiser
TRIPIT
-
Focus on planning trips
-
Gives status information
-
Organises trips well
GOOGLE TRIPS
-
Focus on managing holidays
-
Well designed interface
-
Holiday guide
-
-
Doesn't give status info
-
Doesn't suggest alternate plans
-
Non-predictive
-
No focus on airport facility
-
Doesn't suggest alternate plans
-
Non-predictive
-
No alternate suggestions
-
Non-predictive
-
Doesn't give status info
After clear understanding of our users, we were able to prioritise who we would be focusing on as our primary and secondary persona. Our persona hypothesis consisted of 2 different archetypes, Tom who is business flyer and George who travels for leisure.We used these personas throughout our project to guide design decisions and facilitate discussions about our users varying contexts of use. Key variables differentiating the personas were their age and motivations.
Knowing who exactly we were designing for made me think how the app fits into the lives of the users. Building scenarios for our user allowed us to form the basis of our requirements for the app as well as form tasks for the usability tests further on.
PRIMARY PERSONA
SECONDARY PERSONA
We used journey maps to visualise and communicate the users end‐to‐end experience across various touch‐points with
the scheme. This allowed us to represent user pain‐points and see where we needed to focus our attention.
STRATEGY
-
Our client, Gadrags Academy, has a problem with frequent flyers facing a large amount of time wastage during their travel due to unforeseen delays, long waiting times, and lack of timely information.
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Our idea to address this problem is to provide a mobile and service design experience to help frequent flyers prevent wastage of time during their travel by helping them reach their destination quickly and enabling them with maximum time optimisation.
The purpose is to create a solution that is intuitive enough to prepare or warn flyers in advance, or give alternate solutions to
complete their travel smoothly.
-
The main groups of people who will benefit from our solution are frequent flyers who travel for business for leisure.
-
The primary business goal our solution addresses is to increase satisfaction of those who fly frequently and to establish Voyager
(by GA) as a partner through the entire flying experience.
-
The primary user goal our solution supports is efficient travelling with less time wastage.
DESIGN PITCH
FEATURE PRIORITISATION
Once we were clear about our business and user goals, it was important to prioritise features we wanted to have in the hybrid mobile app. These were used to make design decisions, articulate core values and key attributes the app and service experience should uphold
for both the users and the business.
MUST
SHOULD
COULD
WON'T
Provide predictive
information
Provide visual cues
for alerts
Educate on how
the product works
Make new booking/
purchases
Provide current status information
Compliment service
design solutions
Enable max time
optimisation
Integrate marketing
tools
Enable travel
efficiency
Do price comparisons
It won't be a holiday guide
DESIGN AND USABILITY TESTING
After identifying the main 'plot‐points' in our scenarios, we started sketching and designing the primary pathways our personas would explore through the app. We did a quick prototype using Invison and did our first Usability Testing with 5 participants.
Early sketches exploring our primary persona's scenario during which he faces a flight delay and has no information
from the airline staff
DESIGN ITERATION-1
Too many steps to book
when in hurry
"
Old booking number not required. Won't remember
the number
Very confusing. Don't get
which booking is getting
cancelled
There are other apps for
connectivity. Won't use these
features here
Even though our clients and users were happy with the first draft, they gave us some valuable input regarding the number of unnecessary steps and features
"
DESIGN ITERATION-2
In our design iteration-2, we reduced the booking of alternate flight to two steps and removed the connectivity feature.
We added more details to the app for efficient experience after our second round of user testing.
DESIGN ITERATION-3
UI DESIGN + APP FEATURES TO COMPLIMENT SERVICE DESIGN SOLUTIONS
We wanted our solutions to help flyers prevent time wastage as well help them with time optimisation during their travel.
Giving flyers timely updates, predictive information and providing ways to cut-short their time at the airport proved useful.
TIMELY INFO & INFO IN ADVANCE
MAKING SELF BAGGAGE DROP EASY
Attaching a weighing machine to the check-in
kiosk can enable flyers with over-weight baggage
to pay right at the kiosk without having to take it
to the airline counter.
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Weigh Luggage
-
Kiosk software calculatesthe cost of extra weight according to ticket
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Pay for over-weight luggage
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Scan ticket/boarding pass
APP COMPLIMENTS AIRPORT FACILITIES
TIME OPTIMISATION
SHORTENING AIRPORT QUEUES
MINIMISNG SECURTIY QUEUE TIME
Using RFID chips to segregate the bags
needed to be opened will speed up
the scanning process at security, thus
minimising queue time.
VIEW THE PROTOTYPE
We did our final prototyping with Invision. The prototype mainly focuses on Tom Abbot's (primary persona) scenario.
Tom is flying from Sydney to Delhi to conduct a very important meeting which he cannot afford to miss. While at the airport gate, he gets to know that his flight is delayed by several hours. Upon asking, he gets vague answers from the airline staff about his flight’s schedule. He opens Voyager to track his delayed flight and get alternate options to fly out asap.
IMPACT
We love the way you have applied your
design thinking beyond the app & looked
at the over all experience
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"
I love the predictive nature of the app.
Would love to use it!
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-USER
-CLIENT
LEARNING & REFLECTION
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It's not easy to get through people to interview. Plan ahead before conducting research
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It's important to have your team mates on the same page to avoid conflict.
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Looking at end-to-end experience of the user gives you a better insight on their problems
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It's good to lead the project, but you shouldn't take on all responsibilities yourself
Seems like you've reached the end! Hope you enjoyed it!
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