SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
2020
Travel & Lifestyle
2 Weeks
UX Research
Overview
Flying as a mode of transport has evolved over the past couple of years. Recently, there seems to be a growing trend of ‘Frequent Flyers’ who tend to travel on a weekly basis. Southwest Airlines saw an opportunity to make their movement within the airport more efficient and reduce the ambiguity associated with traveling.
Current Scenario
The design team was struggling to justify their decisions due to lack of insights into the lives of frequent travellers. At this point, the team decided to start a self initiated project aimed at understanding the frequent flyers. Considering the team was based out of India and the potential customers were in United States, we had to get creative around our research methods.
Outcome
The team was able to communicate the value of research-driven design. The case study was later shared with the entire studio so that designers/project managers could try out the framework on their engagement. However, only few of the proposed solutions made it to the support release as majority of the ideas weren’t feasible in the given timeframe.
My Role
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Plan and execute the research methodology that would help us gather information about ‘Frequent Flyers’
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Conducting interviews to understand how our target audience travel
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Facilitate a ‘Crazy 8s’ workshop to brainstorm ideas that would enhance the travel experience of Southwest Airlines customers
Gather information around the journey of ‘Frequent Flyers’ in the United States and identify potential areas of intervention
Research
Approach
The project had a window of 14 days between the MVP release and the support release. We saw an opportunity to utilize this time to talk to frequent flyers and generate opportunities for further enhancements. The process was inspired by the Design Council’s double-diamond framework.
Fig. 1: A snapshot of a high-level design plan for the project
Question Everything
We created a list of questions to clarify our assumptions about the current experience. The list was then refined and sorted into categories based on a high-level customer journey. The journey was created by referring to vlogs on a YouTube channel called ‘Simply Aviation.’
Fig 2. A snapshot of the questions to clarify our assumptions. Image credits: Keshav Venkatesh
High-Level
Journey
The purpose of the activity was to map the different stages in a travellers journey. The questions were grouped together using affinity mapping to identify high-level journey. It was a framework to organise our questions for the interview sessions.
Fig 3. Representation of organising the questions on the high-level journey map
Interviews
The team interviewed 10 frequent flyers from 2 cities. To keep the sessions engaging we recorded our conversations (with interviewee’s consent) and avoided taking notes in real-time.
Interviewed
10 Flyers
Time
1 Hour
Clarified
~20 Questions
Mapping
Pain-points
The research highlighted various painpoints that the travellers experienced throughout the journey. We categorised and plotted them on the high-level journey map to identify focus areas.
Fig 4. Plotting the amount of pain points for each stage of the journey
Persona
Archtypes
We looked at Persona Archtypes to group people based on their travel motivations. We also established guidelines based on the analysis of the interview sessions.
The Business Traveller
During our conversations with the stakeholders, the Business Traveller was highlighted as the most important archtype. We further refined our observations into statements that can be used to generate insights and opportunity areas.
Travel Preparation
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Users usually packed light to avoid check-in luggage.
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Users packed according to the weather at the destination
Pre-Departure Planning
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Users usually had a mental itinerary after a few trips
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En-route weather influenced a the travellers journey heavily
Travelling to Airport
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Most users took cabs to get to the airport
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Users generally slept, worked, or read en route to the airport
At Airport
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Most users took cabs to get to the airport
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Users generally slept, worked, or read en route to the airport
In-Flight
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Most users did not like to be disturbed during their flights
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Users preferred catching up on work or rest during their flight
At Destination Airport
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Users wanted to know the time to de-plane and baggage details
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Users took rental cars or taxis to their destination
Fig 5. Observations categorised based on the journey maps
Opportunity
Mapping
Understanding the intent behind the actions helped us convert the above mentioned observations into insights. The insights were then used to create oppotunity statements that would guide the team during the brainstorming session.
Fig 6. List of opportunities created from the observations
Crazy 8 Ideation
The workshop was conducted in groups of two, where each team picked up an opportunity category and generated ideas for the same. The ideas were then filtered within the pair and later put on display for the entire team to review.
Learnings
The team gained a lot of insight into the journey of ‘The Business Flyer' which helped them back their concepts and solutions while developing. The clients got an opportunity to get a hands-on experience in the product development process which helped us build trust and strengthen our relationship.
Interviews
While interviewing we took a lot of time to collate observations. This was mainly due to the fact that we weren’t taking notes while talking to the customers and decided to extract insights once all the interviews were completed. While the insights turned out very rich, we learned that having someone take notes while we were interviewing could drastically shorten the process as both the activities would happen simultaneously. There is also an opportunity to use Zoom’s AI bot that can convert speech to text.
Effective Storytelling
There were plenty opportunities to use effective documentation techniques like time-lapse or stop-motion to document people actually putting up the ideas on the wall. These effective communication techniques can have an increased impact on the person's understanding of the project.