Identifying the Problem

Using a hypothesis based on our assumptions we condensed the problem to a statement that we used as our focus through our research.

Hypothesis

Airlines need to offer a comfortable and seamless experience at a good price since it will influence what customers decide to use in the long term but it is hard to quickly assess how the airlines differ from each other.

Assumptions

• People complain a lot at the airport
• Amenities/fees/costs between airlines, and within company themself
• Some people value quality and comfort over lower ticket prices
• Mobile application experience can be underwhelming
• Desktop websites tend to be better than their mobile app counterpart
• Travelers use Google flights for a really solid format and UX/UI for a desktop website
• The environment can be stressful, unfriendly, not fun
• Experience for each class is very different (seating arrangements, comfort, amenities)
• Amenities are very expensive

Initial Problem Statement

How might we help travelers choose the most suitable airline based on cost, comfort, and experience?

User Research

Goal of research

The goal of our research was to find people who were already frequent fliers, so ideally people who travel at least 5 times a year. We also wanted candidates who already have certain ticket buying methods and airlines or air travel websites that they gravitate to. Our focus is to understand what it is that our interviewees enjoyed about the current process, what they struggled with, and what they utilized each airport trip. We created a discussion guide of questions based on the things we wanted to know.

Screener Survey

We created a screener survey online to gather 6–10 participants who fly often. After that, we conducted interviews based on the screener’s results.

Insights

• People usually book their tickets online, mainly directly through the airline’s website.
• Vacation is the main reason people fly, with visiting family and/or friends as the second, allowing them to fly up to 5 times a year at most.
• People mainly look at cost, flight schedules, and luggage fees when booking.
• Our testers were on average 21-27 years old, work in business or for a corporation, and live in suburban areas.

We discovered as the main screening question to be how often people fly. We found the 66% who fly up to 5 times a year to be the main group of people we wanted to focus on. The more someone flies, the better and more recent data they can give us. They are the audience who are more likely to know about different apps and websites.

User Interviews

After our screener survey we did 1-on-1 Zoom interviews with eligible users. These interviews were used to get more in depth with people about their airline habits, their paint points, and what they like. We created a discussion guide for our interviews and conducted about 12 with different users.

Trends & Takeaways

From there we got together and used a method called affinity mapping to track the trends we noticed in our interviews.

Insights

• Users plan to save money when buying flight tickets.
• Users try to minimize obstacles at the airport to have a more comfortable flight experience.
• Users usually stick to a certain website when searching for tickets.
• Users schedule and track their flights with different methods. 
• Users like carry-on luggage to avoid fees and to travel light. 
• Users are influenced by membership points but they take too long to accumulate.

Persona

After recording our insights from our affinity map we began building a persona that would encompass our ideal user.

Meet Zahraa!

"Have you ever tried booking a flight with a bouquet of flowers?"

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Age: 31

Location: Queens, NY

Occupation: Florist

Zahraa is a frequent traveler whose main focus is getting the best deal, having a seamless airport experience, and connecting with her family after her flight as quickly as possible. She is a florist living in Queens who is extremely passionate about flowers and botany. In her free time, she enjoys the occasional vacation to explore the best gardens in the country. For these trips she likes to make sure she is getting the best bang for her buck as well as when she is visiting her family which she does quite often. A huge frustration for her is the airport experience, all the obstacles can make her experience less than ideal.

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Reassessing our Problem

By creating a problem statement, we can summarize who a particular user is, the user’s needs, and why the need is important to that user. We found that our original statement was validated and went on to create a new paragraph based on insights, persona, problem, and our goal.

INSIGHT: Travelers try to minimize obstacles at the airport to have a more comfortable flight experience

PERSONA: Zahraa is a florist who wants to get through the airport quickly to see her family.

PROBLEM: Zahraa flies often for work and to visit family but struggles to consistently arrive from TSA to her gate to make her flight on time.

GOAL: How might we help Zahraa, and other travelers, prepare for obstacles by navigating through the airport with minimal delays and maximum comfort?

Research >> Design

Airport obstacles» Create a website that is airport-centric where you can upload boarding passes and enter the airport to get info on that specific airport

TSA, gate, desk, food lines » Live wait time feature for TSA, front desk, and gate lines

Airport navigation issues » Show the time it takes to get from TSA to Gate, Display airport map with a pin to show where you are, add icons on the map to show warnings of long times, and Show food nearby and easy access to menus to plan.

Starting off the Design Process

Together we conducted a design studio which is a method where we all get together draw out some screens, critique what we like, then bring our ideas together and again all sketch a final screen idea and bring that to the design.

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Mid-Fidelity Design

A mid-fidelity prototype is a prototype with limited functionality but clickable areas which present the interactions and navigation possibilities of an application. Mid-fidelity prototypes are usually built upon storyboards or user scenarios. After Ideating and doing low-fi sketches of our ideas, we turned them into a digital Mid-fi, then we prototyped all using Figma.

Gaining Insight from our Audience

After creating our mid-fidelity design, we began testing with users before creating the final design. This way we would be able to understand how users perceive and use our product before going ahead and finalize the design. We gathered 5 interviewees to use the product with four scenarios while announcing their behavior patterns and why they made the choices they did.

Usability Testing Script

Results

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Final Prototype

Prototype Link

The updated mobile web design is a high-fidelity prototype. A high-fidelity prototype will include color, typography, appropriate and relevant text, and more robust functionality. This prototype will include the design changes that were pulled from the mid-fidelity user tests.

Our final website is titled Fast Flights and allows users to

• view live wait times at the airport
• view their boarding pass
• view restaurant information and order ahead
• get live updates about issues within the navigation
• have a map of the terminal with location tracking

From our research we found that these features would help improve the airport experience tremendously. ‍

Recommendations and next steps

As the project moves forward we conducted some next steps (in order) to bring Fast Flights to where it needs to be.

• Conduct more research into what other apps have that we’re missing
• Refine our current features
• Add more features
• Begin offering the website as a mobile app
• Make the website responsive