Blue Air App
Blue is a full-service app for an airline company: A cleaner flight booking, check-in, and flight info experience for everyone.
Role: UX Designer
Software: Figma
The Problem
The current book flight and check-in experience is cluttered and isn’t customizable enough for users.
“I low-key wish this was a real thing”
-Usability Study Participant
Multi-Airport Search
Users can select multiple days and airports for their search, freeing them up to prioritize cost, layovers, and times of flight.
No-Clutter Customize
Users pick the add-ons that matter to them, all in one place.
The Process
Prompt
Using the Sharpen Prompt Generator, I chose to “make a mobile app for an airline.”
Interviews
I wanted to prioritize diversity in recruitment, especially around socioeconomic and age lines, as I inferred there would be big variety within said categories for flying habits. The interview questions focused on behavior, frustrations, and preferences.
Personas
The two personas captured the common frustration with clutter. The younger persona wanted flexibility so he could travel more, while the older persona wanted convenient flights.
Ideate: Competitive Audit
I studied 4 airline apps for their user flow, navigation, accessibility, brand, content, features, and overall impressions. Afterwards, I wrote a report on the findings, identifying my niche
User Journey
To reduce clutter, there needed to be clear way to check-in and book flights. There also needed to be a clear intention for each page, which was difficult given all the moving parts for picking a flight.
Paper Wireframes
I made paper wireframes for all the essential pages. This helped me quickly iterate so that I could prioritize key actions while removing clutter.
Digital Wireframes & Lofi Prototype
To transition from paper to digital, I used Figma. The focus here was on efficiency and efficacy, so I often copt and pasted pages and reformatted to the paper wireframe’s intention.
Moderated Usability Study
Testing! 5 diverse users tried a set of tasks on the app as I tracked their click path, behavior, quotes, and feedback. Afterwards, I collected the data in affinity diagrams, identified themes, and prioritized insights.
Iterate
Priorities, based on research:
Design System
Branding around the name “Blue Air,” I wanted the brand to feel comforting yet modern and forward thinking. The color palette featured reassuring blues and grays, with light blue buttons and orange CTA’s for emphasis. The type hierarchy and iconography was all focused on clarifying the UI for users.
Usability Testing & Iterating
After another round of usability testing, I focused on fixing component functionality and clarifying wording on the preferences and boarding pass pages.
Final App
Impact
Users excitedly expressed a desire to actually use the app, and found it to be overall straightforward.
Takeaways and Next Steps
Increase flight options for more authentic testing
The app currently only has one flight (Oakland to Chicago). More flights would mean that users would actually make choices, putting the flight selection UI to the test.
Collaborate with developers on feasibility
The app requires a more complicated search process than other airlines because of the multiple dates/ airports and preference filter features. It’s important that the back-end developers can confidently code a system to process that information.