Qantas Booking Engine Redesign
Our challenges were to deliver a simplified, personalised customer experience which was optimised for all devices, to increase conversion, reduce costs and deliver a full service travel booking experience. Using a human centred design methodology, our team empathised with our customers to understand their needs. We then took an iterative agile approach to design and transformed the booking experience by addressing existing usability issues and solving a number of customer and organisational pain points.
As Senior UX/UI designer, I worked on customer research, competitor analysis, evaluation, ideation, wire framing, prototyping, usability testing, UI design, and build support. In this case study I will take you through my process.
Project Goals
1
Reframe the search paradigm eg. "Where can I go for 100,000 points or $1500?"
2
Redesign the booking engine using new and existing technology
3
Improve customer experience, increase conversion and reduce cost of sale.
The challenge
Our team was tasked with the challenge of redesigning the entire booking flow, as well as adding new features.
- We needed to understand existing booking flows and scenarios in respect to issues and opportunities identified by customer feedback.
- Address existing usability issues in the current experience.
- Understand our customers needs, desires, pain points and motivations.
- Explore ways to incorporate new products and integrations into the existing booking engine.
- What problems and pain points were our users experiencing with the current solution?
- Seamless flow from the main home screen to the booking engine and to manage my booking.
The existing solution
The booking engine had been live for about 5 years at the time this project started, here is what it looked like before...
The process
Research
In order to understand our customers needs and pain points, we used a combination of site analytics and existing user research, personas and user journeys. Our team also conducted internal workshops with management and subject matter experts to understand organisational needs and conducted competitor reviews to gain insights from existing best in class solutions.
Research techniques
- Analysis of existing customer research, including personas, customer comments and journey maps
- Empathy mapping to determine which customer pain points could be solved inside the booking experience
- Quantitative analysis of existing online feedback form and site analytics
- Internal workshops with management, business analysts, offshore development partners, designers and developers
- Competitor reviews
Ideation
Our team ran a number of collaborative brainstorming sessions, workshops and design jams. During this phase we sketched user scenarios, user flows and low fidelity screen designs for the booking flow including new features we were exploring like express login, save my search and saving passenger details
Wireframes
Moving on from our initial ideation phase, we began mocking up wireframes in Sketch to explore different layout options and flows and how these would display on all devices.
Usability testing
The aim was to gain qualitative usability insights into the proposed redesign of the Qantas domestic booking engine. We tested with a high fidelity clickable Invision prototype of the core booking experience.
Method
- 8 one-on-one interviews, 60 minutes each
- Participants included Frequent Flyers, Leisure and business travellers who booked their own travel on Qantas.com
- Neutral testing environment, to reduce bias
- Cash incentive
- Recorded audio and video for all sessions
Usability tasks
- Choose and book return flights
- View the shopping cart
- Use Frequent Flyer points to pay toward the cost of a flight
- Add a hire car to the booking
- Select options for travel insurance and carbon offsets
- Pay for the flights using any method
“I like it, it’s clean and it’s simple. I like the iconography. I like the cleanness of the site. No blocks of lines.”
- P1 'Louise'
“You can see the fare types straight up [on desktop], which is easier. It’s one of the reasons I choose desktop because I can see things clearer at a glance.”
- P2 'Sophie'
Key Findings
- Most participants really liked the new layout and visual design, citing clarity and cleanliness.
- The desktop cart caused confusion on the flights page as it duplicated much of the in-page content.
- The additional information in the fare summary was very well received and Frequent Flyers especially appreciated seeing the points, status credits and points upgrade features.
- Participants liked the ability to add a car in the booking flow and also wanted to add baggage during the process.
- Points + Pay added some confusion because of the minimum 5000 points overlay and the slider was clearly an interactive element.
- The pre populated fields for booking details was appreciated and made the booking flow much faster, especially on mobile.
- Participants noted that they found the new mobile booking experience much more comprehensive than the current mobile state.
The solution
Based on the findings from our usability testing, we continued designing high fidelity mockups and evolving the design system, adding components as we finished them. Responsibilities were split among the UX team, with each designer working on a different feature. Here are some of the finished designs for features that I was responsible for.
Conclusion & Outcomes
After many rounds of iteration, our team delivered a new and personalised online booking experience for Qantas customers. We held a launch event at the Qantas Mascot campus and presented our designs to the wider team. Within the first two weeks of launch, booking conversions had increased by 2%. My contract came to an end shortly afterwards and I was unable to source any further results. This was a challenging and rewarding project which has improved the flight booking experience for millions of customers per year, while meeting the organisation’s business goals. Through a rigorous user centred design process and iterative design, we were able to understand our users needs and rectify potential usability issues early.
