Simplicity is the result of a project that focused on creating a travel booking app as a minimum viable product that could realistically compete in the market. The aim of this product was to provide a tool for booking low-cost travel for business or pleasure without all of the extra steps of some competing services. This project was completed as coursework during my UX/UI programme. For this project the initial user research was already provided. The focus of this project was on creating a viable business plan and designing a useful and usable product that would fit into a very competitive market.
The Brief and Scope
Understanding The Problem
User Interviews
While the principal user personas for this project were provided, I decided to conduct 3 user interviews to get some more insights into experience booking travel. During this process I also employed contextual inquiry and observed users as they completed bookings on different competitor website. The principal findings that back were that people want:
The best price
The simplest process
The flexibility to combine flights from different airlines easily
Benchmarking
As I continued to define the problem I undertook benchmarking on several competitors in the market. Looking closely at their user flows I was able to better understand the different ways that these services operate and I was able to start informing my business plan.
Industry Interview
Now having a better idea of the market and the competitors I needed to get a better grasp on the realities of the business side of these travel booking apps and of the travel industry in general. To achieve this I reached out to some professional on LinkedIn and was lucky enough to get a reply. The most important things I learned were:
Some booking sites are ‘Metasearches’ (eg. Skyscanner) – they have access to a huge inventory of flights.
Some are OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) – they have the ability to book directly with airlines i.e. no redirects
To combine bookings from two different airlines in one transaction OTA status is required
OTA booking services have razor-thin margins and need to supplement income (hotels, cars etc.)
The Users
Persona
To help guide me while I was creating my design, I created the following persona that was more specific than the general personas provided in the brief of this project. This persona was informed by those provided and also further user research.
Sarah Debuck
29 years old
Lives in Barcelona
Works in marketing
Often travels on short-haul flights for business and pleasure
Has many friends and family living in European cities
Problem Statement
The following problem statement was created to clearly define what needed to be solved:
Our users who book flights online have difficulty finding a wide selection of cheap flights they can book in one place. If we can solve this problem it would impact online flight buyers positively because they would be able to buy the flights they want at the price they expect in one place. It would also benefit our business because it would attract users to our platform as we would be offering a service that others do not.
The Prototype
If you would like to see an interactive version of this prototype on Figma, please go here.
How did we get here?
Paper Prototypes and Wireframes
To get to the final version of this product I conducted 6 user tests and did 3 rounds of iterations. Starting with my paper prototype I used Marvel to do remote moderated testing and get my initial findings that would help shape the product.
Visual Branding, Tone and Desirability Testing
I did many rounds of iterations with visual design and copy tone to get the right feeling for a product that needed to be simple and appeal to both a business and leisure audience
Using desirability testing I was able to make adjustments to the design until I was able to get the desired feelings from users about the product.
Looking Back
This was an interesting project as it required me to do a lot of investigation into the business side of things and create a business plan that would place the product in a competitive market and show a path to monetisation. I really found this part of the project fascinating as the market realities have a big impact on how realistic (or unrealistic) design decisions might be.
What I Learned
Talk to the pros – Interviewing industry professionals for this project gave me invaluable insights.
Listen to the users, trust the research – I got critical feedback from colleagues that the visual branding lacked personality, but my research and testing proved that the decision to keep things simple was the right one.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel – The temptation to try and do things differently when designing for a competitive market was very strong, however users appreciated familiar patterns and lot of what can differentiate a product is ‘behind the scenes’ in its business plan or partner connections, for example.