easyJet Case Study

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Who?easyJet, is a British low-cost carrier airline head-quartered at London

Luton Airport. It operates domestic and international scheduled services

on over 820 routes in more than 30 countries

easyJet asked Somo to bring in a team of specialists to do a deep dive

of their mobile app product and in 7 days present back to them how we

would improve the app and it’s home-screen, “Making it next generation

ready”.

The team consisted of

Myself - Design Lead

Will Custard - UX Lead

Mark Swantson - Product Director

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Problem? easyJet passengers were not engaging with the app as much as the

airline wished, everyone agreed the app wasn’t working hard enough and

doing enough for the user.

easyJet also knew that there was a huge market that they could sell to

but travellers were more likely to use the app to search for tickets or

check a flight’s arrival time than to make a purchase.

Such results are consistent with broader studies on the use of mobile

apps in the travel space. The Mobile Travel Landscape 2016 study by

Phocuswright found that travellers were more likely to use a mobile

device for choosing a destination, comparing or selecting a travel

product or sharing trip experiences on social networks than for a travel

purchase.

Use of airline smart-phone apps by travellersWho flew in the past 12 months

40%60% 48%

52%

77%

23%

Yes

No

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

The stats The Consumer Trends survey found that of those who had used airline

smart-phone apps in the past year, 65% did so to track on-time status

for flights, 61% to check flight availability and pricing, 53% to book flights

and 28% to access airplane WiFi.

How travellers use airline apps

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

65%

61%

53%

28%

2% Other

5% None of the above

Checking the availability of entertainment, food options or wifi

Tracking a flight’s on-time status

Checking slight availability and pricing

Booking flights%

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

“No airline is yet perfect. Each has its own few areas of greatness. But none is tangibly better than anyone else’s.”

- Henry Harteveldt, Airline analyst at Atmosphere Research Group

Hack weekWe decided before we arrived at easyJet what we would aim to deliver,

myself and the head of UX would handle the user research groups, we

would create initially sketches, which would leads into low then high

fidelity designs which we would then make into a tappable animated

prototype.

If we were good for time we would use these high fidelity designs and

create a promotion video of our work out of them which could be used

by easyJet. We aimed to structure our days as such

Day 1 - Deep dive research and understanding

Day 2 - Data collection, analysis, Initial UX

Day 3 - Refined UX

Day 4/5 - Detailed design / Documentation

Day 6 - Tappable animated prototype

Day 7 - Video

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Getting started To get started we set about creating various research groups, we divided

ourselves amongst the easyJet team closest to the brief, other members

of staff and real passengers.

I spoke to several real passengers from the Luton terminal, we asked a

series of questions and showed them several other airlines apps

I asked the passengers a simple question:

“What would make you use the easyJet app more?”

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Findings As varied as the answers I received were a few key points stood out.

- Users wanted a personalised experience.

- Users didn’t want to feel like they were constantly being sold to.

- Users wanted to be informed simply and clearly about delays, gate

changes and how to get help if they had a problem.

- Users disliked tapping and being taken away from the app to third party

sites.

- Users wanted the app to work as their holiday check list reminding them

of things they needed to bring.

- One user expressed how they had spent a lot of money on flights and

wanted to be able to see all their flights and boarding passes in one

location.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Refine

After the review we spent some time analysing the feedback to ensure

we understood everybody and that nothing was missed.

We created a list of refinements to be included in the next iteration

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Next stepsOnce we’d all reconvened and taken easyJet through our research and

discoveries we worked with the internal team to strategies about what

the business needed the home screen to do.

Easyjet explained as much as they’d like the app to be advert and third

party free the update of this area was to large to ignore and that part

of our task had evolved to show ancillary and partner products in a

new way.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Rapid Prototyping Now we got started, with the brief, user research and client requirements

we started about researching the products in the travel sectors doing

this well.. We looked at the BA app, Emirates app as well as lower budget

apps like Gol Transportes Aéreos and Vueling.

We also explorers a range of user focused apps like Uber and Hungry

House, paying special care and attention to interactions, gestures and

how content was personalised.

I initially sketched up 10 different home screen experienced some more

heavily focused to the user some the business and some trying to find a

happy pairing.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

ReviewWe brought together all the people involved thus far on the project

(plus two members of staff who knew nothing and we’re being shown

the early ux for the first time) we took everyone quickly through each

journey to ensure that we were meeting their expectations. We made

detailed notes of what’s working well and what’s not going so well.

These helped us to refine the product.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Wire-framesAfter the review we spent some time analysing the feedback to ensure

we understood everybody and that nothing was missed.

We created a list of refinements to be included in the next iteration

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Design - CardsVery early on I pictured how I thought this home screen should look and

work, I wanted it to be a mixture of Airbnb, Uber and Twitter and thus

clean but informative, I wanted I to be clear to a 9 year old and a 90 year

old and to get here quickly I decided to add a layer of card based UI.

Web and mobile apps are moving away from pages towards completely

personalized experiences. These new experiences are built on an

aggregation of many individual pieces of content which felt a perfect fit

for easyJet, these cards could be images / text / maps / products as well

as partner products, but if mixed in with several easyJet focused content

then the user would not feel blinded by up-sales.

Each card acted as an entry point to more information and as our card

design was swipe based a user could see as little or as many as they

wished without leaving the home screen, we felt this heavily accentuated

the user experience of the app allowing users to view hundreds of quick

digestible stories.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Design - ChecklistWith the rise of users using their devices to access mail this has given

users a bigger understanding of gesture based swipes, forwarding

emails, deleting etc.

We spoke internally about the benefits of this and how in time

repetitive actions or frequent activities felt effortless,

We decided to use this in our home page re-imagination, we felt

strongly that users felt comfortable with check lists and the emotional

award of ticking something off and so we used this function to teach,

remind and support the user whilst not making a user feel constantly

sold to.

Have you got travel insurance? If you have great, tick this off but if you

haven’t then with a tap you can be taken to a quote.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Design - Hierarchy Visual hierarchy allows users to quickly scan information, prioritizing

content based on their immediate needs. Items near the top of the

visual hierarchy (Checklist) Must be most important to the business and

most relevant for users.

For example, Flight Delay.

Primary action is visually distinct from secondary actions means the

user won’t be confused when interacting with your product and will be

less prone to making mistakes. For example, “Check-In” and “Duty Free”

must be clearly distinct.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Design - ColourFor people with visual disabilities, such as colour blindness, relying

solely on colour to convey hierarchy, content or functionality means

they will not be able to use your product and will be an excluded

demographic.

This bothered us and with the limited colour range offered to us by

the easyJet palette, to answer this we took the easyJet orange and

expanded the palette to several other hues.

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

easyJet promo video

Tap here to watch the video promotion created

password: 3asyJ3t

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Final PrototypeIn the 7 days we had we had created a fully animated prototype that

was made up on over 40 screens.

We presented this to the easyJet to which James Millet the Director of

Marketing, Digital & Brand at easyJet said ‘This is Awesome’.

The work that we created in that week and the prototype /

documentation and video gave the easyJet team the tools they

needed to take to their board of directors and partners.

Over the last 12 months I’ve kept a keen eye on the app updates at

easyJet and am proud so say much of our research has made its way

to the final product used by millions every year.

We were also asked back to take a look at how easyJet could do more

to facilitate 3rd party bookings, you can see the video output here

password: 3asyJ3t

easyJet Case Study David Hampshire

Extras Whilst we were developing this hack week project two ideas came to

us which would be ‘nice-to-haves’.

The first idea was to have an automatic filled text message with all

times, dates, and flight numbers needed to send friends and relatives,

we felt that a small extra like this would make the user’s lives easier

and save time and effort.

The second idea we proposed was to create a free ambient

soundtrack for customers who were nervous fliers. This simple extra

was a lopped 90 second track of bird song and the backdrop of the

Swedish Alps, this was to allow users to plug-in and relax to take away

the stress of travel...

Keep your eyes peeled for these coming soon...