Flight Booking Mobile App Concept

A Mobile Travel App for Backpackers

This is a project made from Aquent Gymnasium’s UX Fundamentals Course, which had to have the following requirements:

• medium — website or mobile app
• purpose — book a flight or reserve a table for a restaurant
target user — research and design the medium with the user in mind

I decided to design a mobile app for backpackers booking a flight, backpackers being people between the ages of 18–30 who would like to travel cheaply. As I was abroad in Sydney, Australia at the time, backpackers were plenty and willing to be a resource for user interviews and testing.

In-app booking transactions

For simplicity’s sake, this app did not take into consideration any specific legalities or concerns with booking flights in-app with airlines and 3rd party agencies. The focus was on user flow from flight search to selection.

Tasks & Actions: Interviews

User Interviews

This was a great opportunity to learn more about backpackers and their goals, habits, and priorities with booking a flight through a mobile app. Participants spanned from backpackers in the middle of actively traveling within the next month of the interview, to young professionals on Working Holiday Visa (year-long visa for living and working in Australia).

General Findings

Backpackers are generally willing to give up certain comforts in the name of saving money, ie: longer layover times, early/late arrival times. They rely on communication with customer support should there be an issue with booking flights. Most participants interviewed do not show strong loyalty to any particular airline, putting a high priority to price. However, some have mentioned the reputation of an airline as an important factor after price, layover times, and flight times.

Design Process

Site Map and Navigation

In this phase of design, I stayed with the “hamburger” menu option. Navigation hub was close since this is an app for booking a flight, but based on interviews, I felt that search and browsing would be strongly used for this app.

Wireframes

Initial wireframes focused on the user flow for searching flights for this app.

Usability Testing

All usability test participants have not been tested prior to testing the prototype. Three of the participants are within the target user base (young backpackers who travel cheaply). One other participant is slightly outside the user base but has the same goals and priorities.

General Findings

Participants mention the importance of a customer service contact. Price is priority, followed by number of stops/layovers. The feeling of completing the booking process is not strongly perceived.

The booking form process is another usability issue worth further research. All users tested were aware of the time-consuming process in putting important information in several form fields.