Air travel experience generative research

Air-travel Experience Generative Research
Study project for the “UX Research and Validation” course,
Toronto University
By Elena Glebkovskaya

Project Summary
As part of the Assignment for Toronto University User Research course I needed to conduct generative
research of the air-travel experience to discover opportunities for new products or solutions to help improve the
experience of travellers when travelling by air.
Research method
● User interviews to discover the travelling experience and the pain points
Results
● Customer Journey Map
● Findings of possible pain points
● Recommendations of possible products to improve the air-travel experience

User Interviews process
I decided to choose participants that are very different demographically and with different travel history to
get a better picture of different experiences they could have while travelling by air:
Participant 1: Man, 35 years old, living in Canada, speaks English and travels around 3-4 times a year to
Europe for work, professional conferences and workshops for 3-4 days, usually alone or with his colleagues.
Participant 2: Woman, 56 years old, living in Russia and travelling for a vacation to Europe 1-2 times a year
for 2 weeks, doesn’t speak any foreign languages, always travels with her friends.

Interview Guide structure
Learning goal 1: Get an overall understanding of air travel habits and routine
Questions:
● Do you travel by air?
● How often? Where do you usually go?
● Who do you usually travel with? Who books the tickets?
Learning goal 2:Discover any other important and memorable positive and challenging details
Questions:
● What do you like the most about air travel? Why? Could you please tell me
any examples when this happened?
● What do you hate the most about air-travel and why? Could you please tell
me any examples of this?

Interview Guide structure
Learning goal 3: Discover pain points on the basis on the specific trip
Questions (first open question and examples of follow-up questions):
● Please tell me in detail about your last or most memorable air travel experience.
● What did you do to plan your trip? How did you feel in this process?
● When and where did you start looking for ticket options? Please tell me about this process and
your emotions.
● How did you choose your tickets? What was important to you and why? How did you feel when
you’ve chosen the tickets?
● What were you expecting while at the airport? What was frustrating for you? How did you feel
during a security check and why?
● How was your flight? What would make it better?
● What was your experience when arriving at the destination?
● What did you do next and why?

Customer Journey Map - part 1
During the interviews, I've learnt that traveling by air is a process associated with stressful feelings for many travellers. The
stress is associated with the need to have all the documents in order, and exhausting airport process and waiting times, fear
of flight and confusion in a new airport in a foreign country.

Ideas for possible products to improve the
air-travel experience
Based on my Customer Journey Map I've recommended a range of ideas of possible products to improve
the experience that could be prototyped and tested as a next step.
Step 1 – Planning travel
● A flight aggregator that would allow choosing criteria (cost, connections, flight time, dates,
insurance, meals, entertainment etc.) that are meaningful to the passenger and see flights arranged
according to these criteria to make choice easier
● Show reviews from other passengers to the specific airlines, flights, destinations that could be
filtered by meaningful criteria
● Allow to share your chosen flight option with friends/family/colleagues and
compare your choices to pick the one that would suit everybody

Step 2 - Booking tickets
● A browser extension that would help with booking tickets online – remind about preparing
documents before starting filling in the form, save all the information until the form is complete so
it doesn’t get lost in case of any technical glitch and internet issues, automatically checking the
information for mistakes (spelling, wrong format, comparing with previously filled in forms)
Step 3 – Checking-in online
● Automatic reminder to check-in 24 hours before the flight
● An App to measure your luggage and compare with the airline accepted sizes to avoid surprises
at the check-in counter
● A kiosk in the airport to weight your bag/suitcase before going to the counter to
make sure the weight is OK and have a chance to rearrange things without any
stress if needed
● An App to save boarding passes so they don’t get lost in the email box

Step 4 – Arriving at the airport
● An App that shows a map of the airport and how to find your check-in counter based on the
flight information and your current position
● An App that shows all the shops and cafes in the airport zone so the traveller can plan how to
spend time before boarding
● An App showing the current number of people in line for security and predictions for the next
couple of hours so the traveller can plan the airport arrival time and decide if they want to go to
security or spend some more time in a café

Step 5 – Being on a plane
● An App with entertainment system during the flight
● An App showing what movies are available at different airlines currently so travellers can plan
ahead
● An App showing menus on different airlines so travellers can plan their food choices
● An App that helps with fear of flying (meditating, relaxing, distracting)
Step 6 – Arriving at a destination
● A map of the airport of arrival that helps to find connecting flights, washrooms, cafes and taxis
● An App that shows predictions for waiting time in customs depending of the number of arriving
planes at this time

Recommended Next Steps
As the created Customer Journey Map is high level and based on the experience of only 2 passengers, I
would suggest continuing interviews with more travellers to uncover more challenges and pain-points.
I would also suggest creating several Customer Journey Maps for different scenarios that would follow a
variety of issues travellers faces – for example, a CJM to cancelled flight, for delayed flight, for lost
baggage, for overbooking, for family members who find themselves sitting in different parts of the
plane, for missed connecting flight etc.
It would be great to not only do the interviews but also to observe user behaviours at least at the airport,
as there are many challenges users face but don’t always aware of to describe in the interviews.

Air travel experience generative research

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