Are you ready to travel again?

5 weeks 120+hrs
November 2021
Product designer
Research, UX Design, Usability Testing

Background

After the summer of 2021, Covid-19 is still a threat but some European countries continue to open their border to tourists due to the high percentage of vaccine coverage. The aviation industry has been a slow recovery. People pay more attention to the government travel guide-line to ensure they are allowed to enter under the restriction of destinations.

Problem

While travelling under the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries required documents to declare the traveller's health status.These travel regulations from government websites are usually verbose and vague. Most passengers will spend extra time checking COVID travel requirements before they travel.That leads to tense and uncertain feelings for people when they start to plan the trip.

Scope and Focus

Travel restrictions are subject to different users' circumstances. In this project, the main focus is to remind Ryanair customers about the travel requirements related to the COVID-19 travel regulations of their particular destination. Ryanair aims to ensure its users are well prepared to go on holiday.

Overview

COVD-19 regulation is changing from time to time. I designed a feature for the users to follow the checklist before going on the trip.
DISCOVER
→
DEFINE
→
IDEATION
→
IMPLEMENTATION
→
Reflection

DISCOVER

Research Objectives

The goal I want to achieve from the research process

Market research & Competitor analysis

Understand the current way to help passenger

Ryanair is the largest budget airline group in Europe, is always the first choice when people travel on a budget, and has more monthly active users than any of its competitors. However, they currently only provide a warning banner under the search section to remind passengers about COVID restrictions.

Most competitors provided an extension page for checking COVID status and regulations by various filter options.
However, from my user interview, I found that most users eventually still go on the government website to double-check the information.

Check Competitor analysis →

User interview

More steps and time spend on checking travel information

User interview

I conducted 5 user interviews to understand how users make the decision when they plan a trip under the COVID restrictions.

Empathy Map

The empathy map helps me capture who a user is and to understand and prioritise user needs.

Affinity cluster

I use affinity clusters to synthesise the insights from user interviews.

Key findings:

📄 What documents should be prepared?

“I didn't know we needed a passenger locator form until a week before the trip when I checked the government website.” - Shane

⌛ Keep eyes on the latest updates of destination countries.

"I have five countries' official website tabs on my browser and I refresh to check them from time to time.” - Molly

🏢 The official website source is critical.

“How can I know if this website is an official country website, they all look professional and legit.” - Jasmine

DEFINE

Problem solve approach

How Might We help user get information easier?

After the user journey and HMW to define the problems, my initial approach to solving the problem was using the filter that narrowed down the results that applied to the different passenger circumstances.

Obstacles

  • I found I cannot filter the COVID information applied to each passenger while the user searches the flight tickets without considering the technical feasibilities.
  • The information provided while users are looking for flight tickets could change the time they depart. How can I overcome time-sensitive information?

Solution

  • Before purchase: Provide the current status of the destination country on the flight searching processes to warn the user's current situation.
  • After purchase: Provide an up-to-date documents checklist to reduce the anxiety from the risk of lack of preparation and a related information section for reminding users they are obligated to check the information of the destination country before completing the online check-in.
Check HMW & User journey →

User flow

How Ryanair takes part in the process of planning trip

I jotted down the current searching and purchasing flow and added the reminder features on those moments users possibly felt uncertain.‍

Wireframe

The road of turning the idea into the design.

Once I established the flow to help users, I started to design the user interface. I mapped out my ideas to understand if the design would work smoothly before building up the high-fidelity and then jumped to Figma to create a more detailed and accurate prototype which can be tested.‍

IDEATION

High-fid Wireframe

Provide the right sources at the right moments

Before purchasing flight tickets, Ryanair obligates to warn the customers of the potential risk at the destination. After purchasing, users can manage their journey on the account and compulsory to check online 24 hours to 60 days before flight departure based on the package users purchased. Therefore I place the reminder above the online check-in section where users will see it when they are on the journey page.

Selected Screens

Travel status

  • A modal page is placed before the search result page to catch users' attention to be aware of the travel status of the destination country.
  • Providing the current travel status and the link of sources from official websites helps users access official information to reduce anxiety from unidentified sources.

Notification

  • For those users who can do online check-in earlier, they might not log in to their account again, offering an option that they could be reminded again when the upcoming trip is closer.
  • The feature helps users to prepare documents in advance to reduce erratic feelings before travel.

Checklist

  • Place a required document checklist on the search process and account itinerary management after purchasing the ticket. Ensure users notice the required documents before and after buying flight tickets.
  • Users can use the dropdown menu to see more details and upload the file to ensure they save the required documents.
  • Provide relative information that users can easily access with up-to-date news.

Implementation


Usability test finding takeaways

To discover pain points with the current design, I conducted usability testing with five participants on my first round of usability tests. Most participants found the checklist reminding them to prepare the required documents helpful. But there are some problems I uncovered during the tests:

  • Users felt unsure if the file was uploaded or not during the uploading process.
  • Uploading the COVID certificate could be repetitive for frequent travellers.
  • Users tend to think that status boards on the pop-up page are clickable.
  • Users did not notice the statue on top of the result page while testing. The green colour seems too safe not to pay attention to it
See the prototype ➡

Iteration

Colours play an important role

To address sources of confusion and frustration from usability testing. Those iterations are outlined in the wireframe annotations below.

Considering a lot of users purchase the ticket through mobile. After finishing the priority iteration, my final step was to design the mobile interface for the mobile users.

Reflection

What have I learned?

  • I learned the lesson of exploring more potential solutions in the early stage and considering the technical feasibility of scoping down the focus.
  • I have spent time on both sides of the equation: Listening to users' needs and being the business, considering about business model and goal. Find out the balance in between.

What is next?

  • Enhance the section of users’ documents on the profile to link fluidly with the document checklist so that frequent fly users can avoid uploading the same document each time they go abroad.
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