Overview
Strategy
Ideation
Structure
Visual Design
Prototype

Overview

CMON Flights is a startup that enables people to get better offers and make the whole travel market more efficient. At first, the company was an IATA-accredited online travel agency (OTA), that's why the goal was to create a product that allowed users to buy tickets directly from the app. Lately, the company's objective has shifted to a business model much more oriented to mediating between users and airline websites, facilitating their job, and enabling better offers for travelers.

The case study presented here shows the first MVP based on the OTA business model since the final product is NDA protected.

My Role

  • UX research
  • User personas
  • Empathy maps
  • User flows
  • Journey maps
  • Branding guidelines
  • Design iOS App
  • Design Web App
  • Design Landing page
  • Prototype iOS App
  • Other marketing assets

Tools

Problem

By measuring benchmarks and through academic and user research of the travel market, we identified that the primary problem was to address the reasons for the drop in ticket purchases, which was due to the difficulty of finding the right offers, fulfilling people's overall needs, and price volatility.

The solution regarding this matter is part of confidential information protected under NDA and would not be included in this case study.

Solution

To achieve the product goals and align with the business strategy, I’ve designed an iOS app that is entirely founded on UX research findings, feedback from the team, and tight loops of design iteration; this allowed us to address user needs more accurately and bring us closer to meet the travel market demand. The product was primarily designed to meet the expectation of gen-z users, providing a seamless and efficient experience through a combination of familiarity and unique, impactful features. By creating interactive and video prototypes, we eventually got the airlines’ attention and presented it to potential investors; the contractor is currently handling the project autonomously.

Strategy

Icebreaker

As soon as I received the project brief, I started interviewing stakeholders and developers to better understand the existing information about users and assess the goals and risks the business wants to accomplish. Asynchrony Team communication was a significant aspect throughout our work, so instead of taking too much time from calls & meetings, we could actually focus on the job and improve our feedback loop, which helped us to seamlessly make up for deadlines.
Strategy

Competitive Analysis

To learn more about the target audience, I started to conduct second-hand research, competitive analysis, and usability audit. Knowing what the competition had to offer helped me to identify benchmarks and standards in the current market. For this analysis, I leveraged a ranking method, where I built a table assigning a score to each competitor regarding specific criteria. Before building the table, I’ve explained each criterion to evaluate along with the corresponding rating system by which I’ve analyzed each competitor. Lastly, I evaluated the competition and the ranking system, scoring each result and sorting the totals to see the rough rankings.
Strategy

User Persona

The competitive analysis, usability audit, and data collected from social media polls allowed me to learn more about the target audience and synthesize the different ways users behave. This study helped me to reveal behavioral variables between users, allowing me to cluster them and create different representation models.
Strategy

Empathy Map

By having different kinds of representative users, I was able to build an Empathy map, which helped the whole team to visualize and understand the problems and mindsets of our users while also organizing and synthesizing our research findings in a digestible way. This quick yet significant discovery tool allows us to practice empathy by being in the users’ shoes, organizing, sharing, and making sense of research data points to understand the broader influences in our users’ lives.
Strategy

Journey Map

At this stage, having a much more concrete representation of users’ profiles, interests, and behaviors, I’ve designed a visual series of steps of the process that an user goes through in order to accomplish a goal. This map was updated every time I did significant iterations.
SCOPE

Ideation

From the users' needs/goals I’ve generated How Might We questions so to start exploring a broad field of opportunities. These questions helped us facilitate our product decision.
Build a travel app for youngsters that can't afford flight tickets to discover new journeys and places around the world.
SURFACE

Information Architecture

At this stage, I defined the arrangement of content elements within the app, the relation between each other, and how they are structured to facilitate the overall understanding.
SURFACE

User flow

Once I’ve identified a small number of critical ideas and features that our solution should have, I’ve translated user goals into high-level User Stories (Epics). This provided clarity about features and requirements informing upcoming User-flows. Here, I've reported the following user story:
"As a traveler, I want to book a flight so I can fly to my destination."
SURFACE

Low-fi Wireframe

To facilitate the flow of ideas, I’ve started to sketch some solutions on paper. This process allowed me to provide a visual form of the product and a general arrangement of elements.
SURFACE

Mid-fi Wireframe

Before jumping on the high-fidelity design, I wanted to keep things conceptual through mid-fidelity wireframes, so I could focus attention on interactions and layout instead of aesthetics.
SURFACE

Visual Identity

Since CMON Flights app was made from scratch, I had to come up with a visual identity for the brand before getting my hands on the final mobile app design. Based on the target audience, we have decided to go with a playful and minimal brand that would promote discovery and adventure.
Surface

Typography

Creating a range of text items and categories allowed me to generate a hierarchy of information, which is critical for users to read and process the given information correctly.
SURFACE

Colors

Across the UI design, I needed to create a color palette because the chosen colors would address and inform users' decisions. Colors influence how users navigate, learn and use the product, as well as how the products drive consistency.
SURFACE

Components

Wireframes helped me address any component used across the app to design high-fidelity mockups and create thorough prototypes seamlessly.
SURFACE

Hi-fi Design

SURFACE

Dark Mode

To satisfy users with any preferences, I've also designed a dark mode version across every screen and component, so to keep users' eyes more comfortable at any moment.
SURFACE

Prototype

At this stage, after consistent iterations and feedback from the team, I’ve reflected every effort into a final outcome, creating digital prototypes for each significant flow.

Thank You For Reading This Far!

back home