All names and trademarks are intellectual property of Southwest Airlines Co. All information pertaining to this study are my own and do not reflect the views of Southwest Airlines.
Photo by Youssef Sarhan on Unsplash. Design by me.
The Challenge
SOLIDIFYING BRAND CHOICE WITH CUSTOMERS
The saying, “there’s no such thing as bad press,” couldn’t be further from the truth when observing the climate of the commercial airline industry. Stricken with a slew of poorly handled customer issues ranging from forcible deboarding of passengers to improper transport of pets resulting in their death, the opportunity to cement Southwest Airlines as a customer favorite airline is greater than ever. Having the reputation of a friendly staff is a good start, but what can be done to better secure a well-standing reputation?
Our high-level goals for this study are to:
• Provide value to the user to promote sales and foster a good relationships with customers
• Align design goals with overall business value
MY ROLE
My participation in this project occurred between May and June of 2018 in collaboration with one remote graphic designer, whom I mentored in a management role at a previous company. I led the project strategy, coordinated efforts, and developed the content writing. Due to the size of the team and the length of our study, our focus will be for the iOS platform.
RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS
DEFINING GOALS FROM CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS
In order to define our goals, we first need to understand how Southwest Airlines compares to its competitors. Once identifying categories for improvement, we can then develop a more granular focus on aspects of each category to improve upon. Here are some of our key findings:
LARGEST U.S. AIRLINES RANKING BY CATEGORY
2017
*Alaska and Virgin America have merged.
Source: Wall Street Journal article, The Best and Worst U.S. Airlines of 2017; data collected for the full year of 2016 and 2017 from Global Eagle’s masFlight Analytics Platform and consumer complaints from the Department of Transportation.
Source: Wall Street Journal article, The Best and Worst U.S. Airlines of 2017; data collected for the full year of 2016 and 2017 from Global Eagle’s masFlight Analytics Platform and consumer complaints from the Department of Transportation.
As illustrated by the data above, Southwest Airlines has performed rather well—with exception to a poor ranking for on-time arrivals and mishandled baggage. In contrast to their ranking for on-time arrivals, Southwest Airlines leads the boards in terms of extreme delays, which could be an indication that they are able to resolve issues quickly. Though these low performing categories cannot be solved by the app, there is an opportunity to make the experience less frustrating by providing enhanced customer support options through the mobile platform.
DEPARTURES EXACTLY ON TIME
FEBRUARY 2016
Source: Cranky Flier article, Many Airlines Say They Have the Best On Time Performance, Let’s See How They’re All Right; data collected for the full year of 2016 from Global Eagle’s masFlight Analytics Platform.
Poor performance for on-time arrivals also could have a negative impact for on-time departures of flights continuing operation. Southwest Airlines' dismal performance in 2016 further supports the notion of customer frustration, which could potentially be alleviated through enhanced support options.
BREAKDOWN OF MISHANDLED BAGGAGE
Source: SITA 2018 Baggage Report
The brunt of mishandled baggage issues are due to delays and are commonly handled in person at a Southwest Airlines kiosk by the baggage claim area that can oftentimes have long waiting lines. Complimentary vouchers towards a future Southwest Airlines are commonly provided to customers for the trouble.
Though mobile apps cannot remedy issues pertaining to mishandled baggage, perhaps there is an opportunity to make the process of missing baggage claims easier for the customer and improve customer relations.
EVALUATING THE CURRENT EXPERIENCE
Before we start our ideation process, it is important to get a feel for the current user experience to mitigate any existing issues that could potentially affect our design goals.
PROS
From left to right: navigation menu, flight status search, flight check-in, book a flight, reserve a rental car.
All basic functionality is provided as expected and even supports partnering services for car rentals and the ability to purchase with reward points. Through the use of the dynamic dashboard, users can quickly access check-in options and their boarding pass in relationship to when they are expected in the customer journey.
CONS
From left to right: main dashboard, book a hotel, web app for booking vacations, contact us.
Overall, the app has a strong focus on upselling and can detract from their services. In addition, the app does not provide the ability to book hotels or bundled services despite being available on the web app. And lastly, customer support is not categorized and could be further optimized to reduce the time to resolve issues.
HOW DOES THE COMPETITION STACK UP?
PROS
From left to right: dashboard, book a trip (flight), travel advisory (external site).
The app is very basic and focuses on the main service: to book a flight. This simplifies the purchasing process and reduces a lot of the noise that other competitors provide.
CONS
From left to right: credit card application (external site), Alaska lounge locations and hours (external site), navigation, contact us (California options)
When focusing purely on flight bookings, the remaining information seems like an afterthought. This is shown through it’s repetitive use of iframes to load other travel information, which creates an inconsistent functional language. Additionally, the customer support information is too segmented and requires multiple clicks to get to a contact in need.
PROS
From left to right: Delta Sky Club search, book a flight, airport map of SFO, parking reminder feature, baggage tracker.
Delta’s app has many options to the customer’s benefit including airport maps, parking reminders, and baggage tracking.
CONS
From left to right: today (itinerary dashboard), navigation, Delta partner information (external) baggage fee information (external), contact us.
Similar to the Alaska Airlines app, many resources are provided through an iframe, which has an inconsistent functional language. And due to the abundance of options, travel information becomes difficult to access and creates a complex navigation.
PROS
From left to right: book flights, in-flight entertainment information, travel tools.
The JetBlue Airlines app seems to be the best in terms of being able to access customer resources and additional travel information.
CONS
From left to right: dashboard, travel questions (iFrame), contact us (list), contact us (call function).
Similar to Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airlines also has a high upsell focus on the dashboard. And again, we can observe many resources opened externally through iframes as well as a complex contact us section.
PROS
From left to right: book a flight, airport map of SFO, Uber service integration, baggage tracker, wheelchair service request.
Of all the apps observed, United Airlines provides the most additional travel resources and service options. But it comes at a cost.
CONS
From left to right: dashboard, navigation, WiFi and entertainment information, contact us.
This bevy of information also creates a complex dashboard and navigation and poor hierarchy of content.
REFRAMING THE PROBLEM
MOBIlity as a First choice And A first response
As mobile purchasing demands grow, providing more in-app offerings could significantly increase brand preference and foster a continued revenue stream.
At the time of writing, mobile apps within the travel industry is still a relatively new expansion and has a lot of room for growth. Customer accessibility and favoritism for mobile purchasing has great potential for capturing favoritism among customers that could promote repeat purchase and brand loyalty, which is the likely reason that the experience needs more optimization.
In order to define our areas of improvement, we conducted a SWOT analysis.
SWOT analysis created by me.
The SWOT analysis allowed us to study the existing app’s strengths and weaknesses in order to identify opportunities to improve business value through added features while identifying threats to be aware of.
The solution
A Seamless experience with enhanced support
Mobile purchasing and usage has grown exponentially in recent years—especially with younger demographics. Providing a seamless and intuitive mobile experience can be the difference in winning sales. In addition, by identifying customer issues and providing support, we can potentially increase brand choice, customer retention, and customer appreciation.
Designed by me.
LOST BAGGAGE CLAIMS
Leveraging the dynamic dashboard, we can provide another option to file a lost baggage claim—potentially reducing the time to resolve the issue. Details of the flight can then be provided more quickly than working with a customer representative without contextual information.
Lost baggage claim workflow interaction design. Designed by me.
And lastly, real-time notifications can be processed more quickly through the app and baggage claim options with invoicing data could simplify the process further through pre-filled form fields.
Found baggage delivery workflow interaction design. Designed by me.
NEARBY SUGGESTIONS FOR FLIGHT DELAYS AND EARLY ARRIVERS
Suggestions for nearby activities and dining could be an added benefit for travelers that have delays or have arrived early. This has an added potential for fostering partnerships with local businesses to provide added benefits to the customers as well.
Nearby suggestions workflow interaction design. Designed by me.
TRAVEL BUNDLES AND FASTER REPEAT PURCHASES
The ability to purchase bundled services within an app is not common, but has great potential in securing customer favoritism by simplifying workflows.
Book a saved travel bundle workflow interaction design. Designed by me.
IN-APP ABILITY TO BOOK A HOTEL
In order to book bundled services, we also must provide a consistent experience to book a hotel individually in a consistent workflow.
Book a hotel workflow interaction design. Designed by me.
THE Ideation PROCESS
A REMEDY FOR TRAVEL ANXIETY
During our ideation exercise, we chose the technique of design charrettes, which is executed through individual rapid sketches, group critiques, and individual iterations. This technique allowed us to explore our own individual ideas and have an open feedback system, which we later used to reiterate our concepts; thereby, aligning our exploration.
First image: Concept sketch for travel bundles and ability to repeat purchase. Second image: Concept sketch for submitting a lost baggage claim. Sketches created by me.
Both images: Nearby suggestions and activities for travelers that arrive early to their terminal or have a flight delay. Sketches created by Francisco Jimenez.
When providing new features, it is crucial to increase adoption and retain customers by not disrupting the current design system that they have grown accustomed to.
Conducting ideation exercises remotely proved to be challenging, but became easier the more we met. Because we wanted to simulate a real world project, it was important to us to adopt the existing design system and improve the feature offering.
ADAPTING TO A FAMILIAR ARCHITECTURE
Original Information Architecture
Current Information Architecture for the navigation.
Overall, the current Information Architecture is simple and intuitive by providing similar menu expansions for each of the service offerings. However, the contact us section seems to be a heavily focused on social engagement, which could potentially have more negative than positive outcomes if customers are attempting to reach customer support. The app also has a first-level menu item to redirect users to the Southwest Airlines website, which feels unnecessary if the app has all the applicable actions that the user would need in the context of a mobile app.
Current Information Architecture for the dynamic dashboard.
The dynamic dashboard is mainly geared for upsell opportunities and providing travel information for upcoming trips. There really is not a post-flight display specific for that phase of travel, but it was important to show the full timeline of a trip for completeness. For post-flight information, the dashboard reverts back to promotions that are found when there are no upcoming trips.
Concept Information Architecture
Concept Information Architecture for the navigation. Some pages were consolidated to be more simplified. Highlighted areas are the focus of this study.
In our concept Information Architecture, you will find that I have highlighted the main areas of implementation. The travel bundle section leverages similar menu items as other offerings in order to provide a familiar experience. The navigation was also simplified by removing the social media links and by relocating the website menu item as a child page of Flying Southwest.
Concept Information Architecture for the dynamic dashboard. Highlighted areas are the focus of this study.
The concept dashboard leverages much of the same structure as the original. Dynamic by nature, we wanted to provide flexibility with current design patterns to provide our enhanced support features. Should users experience a delay or arrive to the gate early, they are able to access nearby suggestions directly from the dashboard following a notification. Lost baggage claims are also available on the dashboard post-flight, which is more parallel to the user journey and doesn’t warrant any unnecessary attention.
The Framework
Something Old, Something New...
The lost baggage claim feature would not adopt existing patterns and required a user flow diagram in order to outline the workflow.
Designing user flows leads to better results for both the user and business.
-Morgan Brown
Lost baggage claim user flow. Designed by me.
Having a variety of customer service methods was important to provide added comfort to customers with varying support preferences
ROUGH DRAFT OF NEW FEATURE WORKFLOWS
In the preliminary stage of the wireframes, general content information was laid out to gain a perspective on content organization and any spatial limitations that we may encounter. We can then mitigate any issues quickly before adding more elements that could increase production time.
Workflow to submit a lost baggage claim. Design by Francisco Jimenez.
Workflow for nearby suggestions and activities for travelers that arrive early to their terminal or have a flight delay. Design by Francisco Jimenez.
Workflow for travel bundles and ability to repeat purchase. Design by Francisco Jimenez.
FINAL ITERATION
Using my team member’s rough draft, I further refined the prototype with an acute attention to detail to design system consistency. Generally, elements such as fonts and iconography would not be a part of this process, but because we are leveraging the existing design system, it was necessary to validate the consistency of our design decisions with the existing app before adding in colors and imagery during the high-fidelity prototyping phase.
New workflows and features should be familiar patterns to reduce cognitive load and increase adoption.
Workflow to submit a lost baggage claim. Design by me.
Workflow for nearby suggestions and activities for travelers that arrive early to their terminal or have a flight delay. Design by me.
Workflow for creating a new travel bundle. Design by me.
Workflow for editing an existing travel bundle. Design by me.
Refinement
...Something Borrowed, Something Blue.
In the high-fidelity stage, I opted to change the colors by adding a subtle gradient to the top and bottom panels to create a hierarchy between those sections and the main content area. I also added a subtle gradient to draw more focus to actionable components like buttons. These changes helped bring a little more life to the app by not appearing flat and uniform, which was important with a limited color palette.
Workflow to book a hotel. Prototype and design by me.
Workflow for lost baggage claim and receiving baggage. Prototype and design by me.
Workflow for nearby suggestions for travelers that arrive early to their terminal or have a flight delay. Prototype and design by me.
Workflow to book a saved travel bundle. Prototype and design by me.
Workflow for creating a new travel bundle. Prototype and design by me.
Workflow for editing an existing travel bundle. Prototype and design by me.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Bringing value Through an exercise of User empathy
Despite being a personal project without proper validation, our research leads us to believe that:
RESOLVING CUSTOMER ISSUES QUICKLY COULD STRENGTHEN RELATIONS
support metrics could expose more opportunities to improve issues
first to market with a strong MOBILE experience and variety of purchasing options could secure repeat BUSINESS