Southwest Airlines
Problem at hand: Southwest airlines wants to introduce a new system to improve customer experience when their customer lose baggage on a trip, and want to know where their belongings are and when they will get them back.
Team of 5 UX Designers - Carolina Larach, Daniel Karp, Hetal Ajmeri, Karielle Moe and Samantha Tan
My Role: I worked as UX designer in all areas of the project and I was involved in producing major deliverables of the project.
Tools: Figma, Trello, Maze, Zoom
The challenge:
Our team was working on a 2 week design sprint in which we had to introduce new feature in the existing website.
We also had to keep in mind that we are using the resources and processes that already exist. We had to made sure that we are not altering any of the company’s policies. We had to approach in a way that we add new features instead of changing entire website.
We chose column drop responsive web design for this project.
Overview
Southwest Airlines Co., an American airline is low-fare, no-frills air service with frequent flights of mostly short routes. It mainly caters families, young adults, businessmen, and women.
In a year where over 1.4 million pieces of luggage were marked as “mishandled” by airlines, Southwest was not actually the worst offender, even going so far as to secure a spot on the top 5 US airlines least likely to lose your bags in 2022. Southwest is eager to capitalize on this positive PR boost
Reason for Delayed Baggage
Delayed bags accounted for 71% of all mishandled bags in 2021 – a 2% increase from 2020.
Breakdown of Mishandled Baggage
Transfer bags historically account for most mishandled bags. An increase in long-haul flights in 2021 has pushed up the bags delayed at transfer to 41% – a 4% increase from 2020.
Data says that the staff accessing real-time information on mobile devices continues to be a focus for investment, with almost all airlines (83%) planning to provide staff access to real-time baggage status information by 2024, a considerable increase from 43% today.
Like most of the airlines, Southwest too announced investments to enhance WiFi, install latest-technology onboard power ports and enable new self-service capabilities to make travel even easier.
Research Goals
What is the current experience/process that occurs when luggage is lost?
-What are the user pain points when this happens?
-What has gone well or made the process better?
-How do they feel and/or what is their reaction when it happens?
-Why is it a bad process?
Where do they go for help to know about the status of their luggage?
Interviews:
In order to understand and empathize with our users we conducted 8 Interviews. Most of these people had their experience of lost or delayed baggage in last 6 months in United States or internationally. This gave us learning about the existing process of different airlines in this particular situation and the pain-points, needs and goals in the journey of lost baggage.
Affinity Mapping & Key Findings:
After completing the interviews, we could see that users were frustrated and stressed to know that their baggage was missing and they right away wanted to know where their bags are. They felt like they have lost it forever and not going to get their belongings back every again. This gave us a start to construct Affinity Map to analyze the data. Affinity Maps are a great way to analyze data because it brings me closer to the user and gives understanding about their challenges and pain points. After consolidating , 3 key metrics came to light:
Participants sees a ground crew as a first point of contact after realizing their bag is not their
Not being in control and knowing what was happening was the most frustrating part
They felt at ease ones they knew they are part of process and receiving updates on phone
These Key insights led us to our persona, Megan Smith.
She is a small business owner. She is a frequent flyer and prefers southwest as they are hospitable and low cost. in addition to this they let you carry 2 free checkin baggages
So How Might We.. help Megan with clear information guide?
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
To understand how might we help Megan with her challenges and pain points we did a study of best practices within the industry and in related industry.
Competitive Airlines
Comparative Services
Now let’s have a look at their existing designs
Existing process on mobile website
Information about lost baggage in the existing website
Existing information on desktop website
Testing Existing Mobile Website
We thought there's too many clicks to find the information needed, especially considering the user is in distress
Tested with 5 Participants
Goal:
Understand the user's pain points when searching for the baggage help center from the current mobile website.
Understand how intuitive and easy it is to access the information
While the Average Duration was 48.3s, the user had to make a series of choices, users spent an average of 9.97 seconds deciding between "Flight" and "Help Center", 14.26 seconds on "Flying Southwest" vs. "Checked Baggage and 15.35 seconds reading multiple "Checked baggage issues" options.
One of our participant put it forward in a best way, users found the lost baggage FAQ through "trial and error" the location was not obvious users, especially in distress, do not want to go through so many clicks to find what they're looking for users were looking for the word "baggage"
Takeaway:
Make it easier for Megan to find the baggage help information she is looking for Reduce amount of clicks to get the info needed
At this point we also concluded that Megan needed her answers quickly when she was stressed. Going by this we introduced “Help with Baggage option in the home screen so after going there, she could easily track the status of her missing baggage.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
Testing Mid Fidelity Prototype
All users successfully found “help with baggage” button on the landing page.
It took users an average of 2.44 seconds to select this option.
0.0% Misclick rate
Overall, the users were able to efficiently go through the process of tracking their baggage and reporting the issue
However, some questions still remained unanswered.
The users still wanted to know what happened and why their bags weren't there, as well as when will they be getting their baggage back. And by this it means that Megan is still stressed out!
High-Fidelity Prototype
Column Drop Methodology to make the most use of desktop real estate, within the bounds of the current design
And then as the Call to Actions on the left increase, they have more space to add on
Moving Forward
Test Copywriting: Want to make sure the user feels reassured and friendly
Test Desktop Website: Test the desktop website to see of users can find informatiom
Design Studio: How to get travelers to adapt this new program?
Creating Chatbot: A feature to provide real-time assistance, anywhere
App Integration: Integrating the baggage tracking feature into the app