Reducing Friction in the Booking Experience for One of America’s Largest Low-Cost Airlines.
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.
3 Months
UX/UI Designer & Front-end Developer
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
Travelers using Spirit Airlines’ app often face unclear pricing, surprise fees, and an interface that lacks confirmation cues. As a result, they frequently feel the need to go back and double-check selections like dates, luggage, and add-ons slowing the process and increasing frustration.
Analyzed competitors like JetBlue, Allegiant Air, Frontier, Southwest and booking.com to identify best practices and gaps.
3 Positives: Bugdet Friendly, Clean and intuitive, making it easy for users to compare prices and a map next to the hotel for the user be able to make a informed decision.
3 Negatives: Third party issues, frequent fees, comparison across airlines can make the process longer.
Conducted qualitative interview with 5 individuals aged 25 to 34 who had traveled on a budget within the past six months.
"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
To gain deeper insight into the low-budget travel experience, 10 individuals were surveyed to uncover real pain points and unmet needs. Their firsthand perspectives helped shape user-centric strategies for the project.
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.
To align insights with the strategic goals, the findings were synthesized and grouped to identify key areas for action. With that foundation in place, a prioritization framework was developed based on the volume of collected input. A 2x2 matrix was then used to evaluate which items had the greatest potential to create future opportunities and drive long-term success for the solution.
I wanted to ground my ideas in evidence and ensure my approach is measurable.
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.
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.
Creating a JM 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.
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" 3P.
“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.
As part of the end-to-end process, I began developing the project using JavaScript and React, integrating the Amadeus API to support real-time travel data features. While the build is still in progress, the code is available for review on my GitHub, offering a closer look at my technical approach and front-end implementation.
Usability testing revealed significantly higher user satisfaction, with participants praising the new flow for its clarity and ease of use.