Smoother Skies: Improving Spirit Airlines’ Digital Experience.
Spirit Airlines aims to provide affordable air travel with a user-friendly digital experience. While the app performs reasonably well, there are opportunities for improvement, particularly in areas like flight selection, fee transparency, and personalization. Addressing these aspects could further enhance customer satisfaction and trip planning efficiency.
UX/UI Designer
Desk research, competitive analysis, survey, interview, heuristic analysis, JTBD, HMW, Impact vs benefit matrix, MoSCoW method, Card sorting, hypothesis statement, journey map, moodboard, crazy 8's wireframing, user testing, A/B testing.
Figma, Maze, Kasort, Meet
This case study aims to enhance Spirit Airlines’ booking experience by creating a seamless, user-friendly journey from flight selection to payment. By focusing on clarity, accessibility, and transparency, the overhaul addresses common user pain points and aligns with business goals of increasing conversions, reducing customer service queries, and fostering loyalty.
To truly understand what users experience, I conducted in-depth research using multiple methods:
Conducted qualitative interviews to uncover real pain points and needs.
"My booking process involves setting flexible dates to find the cheapest options. If the app could suggest cheaper dates around my preferred travel dates, that would be a big plus." P4
" I mainly look for price, flight duration, and layovers. If your app can highlight the best options based on these criteria right from the start, it would streamline my decision-making process." P1
"I usually search for flights based on time and price, then look into the airline’s policies on luggages and refunds. If your app can consolidate this information clearly, it would be very helpful." P5
Struggle to to locate certain options or features on an Airline platform.
Find it kinda challenge to find a flight that fit their schedule and budget.
Find it somewhat unclear pricing details when booking a flight.
Visualizing Prioritization with the Impact vs Benefit Matrix and Moscow Method
I wanted to ground my ideas in evidence and ensure my approach is measurable. Here some of them:
We believe that enhancig fee transparency by clearly displaying all costs upfront will result in greater trust and fewer booking drop-off because we know hidden fees are a significant deterrent, and users are more likely to complete purchases when they feel informed and in control.
Additional fees were also a through-line among reviews particularly for seat selection, baggage and personal items making the cost much higher than anticipated.
Booking Drop-offs: Track the drop-off rate during the booking process to see if it decreases. Completion Rate: Measure the increase in completed bookings.
We believe that highlighting key information in search results based on user priorities will result in improve decision-making efficiency because users often face high cognitive load of information and benefit from being able to identify essential details at a glance..
“I mainly look for price, flight duration, and layovers. if your app can highlight the best options based on these criteria right from the start, it would streamline my decision-making process."
Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measure the CTR for search results to see if users are engaging with highlighted information.
Creating a CJM provides insights into the user's journey with the product, helping identify pain points, areas for improvement, and opportunities to enhance the overall user experience. I also include the front-door experience in my CJM to analyze the crucial entry points where users first interact with the product, ensuring their initial impressions are seamless, engaging, and set the stage for the rest of their journey.
Ann Gullar, has been planning to visit her family in Miami for her mother's birthday next month. As a young professional on a tight budget, she's heard about Spirit Airlines' low-cost options but is cautious about additional fees. She decides to book her flight using the mobile app during her lunch break.
After 2 rounds of usability testing, I created a high-fidelity prototype that incorporated the feedback and insights gathered from the previous rounds. The goal was to ensure that the design not only met user needs but also provided a seamless and intuitive experience.
Here are some of the key findings from the usability testing:
On the airport flight page, the search bar was originally labeled “From where?” After observing that a user—who had never flown before—was confused about whether to search for a city or an airport, I updated the label to “Search for airport, city, or address” to make it clearer. I also improved the prompt for enabling location services and added features that show how far the airport is from the user’s current location, along with an estimated travel time to get there.
Displaying the trip duration provides users with immediate feedback about the length of their stay, reducing cognitive load. This is especially helpful for users who may not be consciously aware of how many days their trip spans when selecting departure and return dates. Users can quickly adjust their dates to match their desired trip length without having to mentally calculate the duration. This streamlines the booking process and minimizes errors, such as accidentally selecting an overly long or short trip. "I loved the trip duration feature, I wish Airbnb had it"
“I don't like to seat on the wings, would be nice to see the plane, to factor that into my purchase” P1 "Having the visual aid helps me when choosing a seat on the plane" P5
To ensure our redesign truly met users’ needs, I created an A/B testing data-driven approach that lets real users guide our next steps. By comparing the original and updated versions side by side, I would set out to discover which design delivered a smoother, more intuitive experience.
Does highlighting key information reduce the time users take to complete a booking?
Can users recall the key details of their booking (e.g., flight time, baggage) without revisiting previous steps?
30% Struggle to to locate certain options or features on an Airline platform.
We believe that implementing a new design for the flight selection interface will make the booking process faster, reduce cognitive load, and lead to a higher completion rate.
Risk: There wont be a wide enough variety of issues for the users testing the app to get meaningful data for all features.
Mitigation: Increase the data sample to something larger in order to attempt to capture more scenarios but within the allocated budget.
Analyzing that the results are statistics significant:
By ensure that my P-value is below 0.05. There is a less than 5% chance that the null hypothesis is true.
Primary Target Audience: Users looking to book domestic flights, which represents Spirit Airlines’ main customer base.
Secondary Target Audience: New users visiting the Spirit Airlines website or app for the first time, to assess how the redesigned interface impacts initial impressions and conversions.
Usability testing revealed significantly higher user satisfaction, with participants praising the new flow for its clarity and ease of use.