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DESIGN EXERCISE
EXPEDIA FLIGHTS - DATE SELECTION EXPERIENCE
Project Brief
Expedia’s mobile website provides the starting point for many magical journeys around the world yet parts of the UX are far from magical. Redesign how someone chooses the dates for a trip. Assume people may have flexibility in their schedule, so think about how you could help someone choose the best dates.
My Role
User Research, Prototyping and Visual Design
Time-frame
4 hours
Identify how the interactions of Choosing Dates falls into the complete journey.
Making with Extreme Personas.
Establishing a basic understanding of WHO I am designing for.
Discovery Phase
Used methods of Remote Surveys, Competitor Analysis and Short personal Interviews to discover and define the design problem.
Outcomes
Identify Pain-points in the Flow. Gather user supported data around the missing pieces.
Personal Experience of the Flight booking Experience.
Identifying where in the current flow can I make the most impact.
User Research
Remote Survey
After going through the experience myself, I felt that when I had flexible dates to choose I was considering factors like Price, Airline, Flight Duration and Stops to refine my search. I was wondering if other users also had similar priorities when it came to choosing flights with flexible schedule.
I sent out a quick survey to friends to gather information about the various factors I was considering and also gave room for them to tell me about other factors that I might have missed considering. I managed getting 12 responses within minutes.
The results interestingly pointed out that 100% of the people considered Price as their top priority. Next thing they were looking for was the Flight times.
Survey Results. Price and Flight Durations stand out.
Data from the quick survey I sent out. This directed my focus to Price and Flight Duration and Departure-Arrival Times.
Iterations Phase
Creating Paper Prototypes, Click-able flows and Lo-fi Prototyping to explore the various options to bring my ideas to life.
Outcome
Quickly test my ideas and direct my efforts towards a particular direction.
Paper prototypes of two different ideas.
Quick sketches of prototypes on Paper.
Exploring the flow for one of the Ideas. Also pointing to the Information showed and the Interaction Model.
Exploring the flow for one of the Ideas. Also pointing to the Information showed and the Interaction Model.
Click-able prototypes on Pop by Marvel
Used Pop by Marvel to quickly make click-able flows of the paper prototypes I was making.
User Testing of both the Ideas.
Tested with participants and got their response about both the ideas.
Tested with participants and got their response about both the ideas.
Creation Phase
Created Hi-fidelity prototypes and Visual Design assets using tools like Sketch and Marvel to create high fidelity prototypes.
Outcome
Actually see the interaction model work at the actual scale.
Visual mock-ups of the Idea.
First try at visually representing the ideas I sketched and tested.
The whole flow that encompass the selection of dates and thereby the flights.
Quick discussion with users to test the visual style, information layout and work flow
Second try at visually representing the defects that people pointed out.
The whole flow that encompass the selection of dates and thereby the flights.
Sketch screen shot of my working screen at the end of the my 7 hours work.
Project Impact
This design exercise, encouraged to think quickly and be nimble on my feet and see myself go though my design process in the shortest amount of time. Working though the process actually made me not only redesign how people choose Dates when they have flexible schedules, I was also able to make the flight selection weave right into the flow while considering all the factors one needs to consider while having a flexible schedule.
Challenges
- The limited amount of time to work on the Project.
- Validate my assumptions from time to time to see if I was on the right track.
- Making the quick sketches and prototypes communicate my process.
- Having the original functionality of the experience still intact while exploring something different.
Takeaways
- Woah That was the best adrenaline rush I had in the past couple of weeks.
- I've understood that research can be quick and simple to move fast.
- Also leveraging the visual design muscle to make my ideas speak for what they truly speak.
- Fail Fast and Move quickly!