Successfully pitched redesign Vietnam Airlines (VNA) website
View websiteView appView reportMain pages Vietnam Airlines website incl. booking tool.
Tight deadline and many, rather cryptic requirements from the customer.
Propose new design VNA website based on user research. The redesign should meet the latest trends, whether is concerns design- and/or airline trends.
Kickoff workshop
To kickoff the project we had formal design kickoff session. We locked ourself into a room for a few afternoons to have some brainstorm and design exercises.
We've discussed, as a warm-up, on a global level:
And how both would impact the design.
Design sessions
Because the customer had a list of requirements that needed to be checked for the vendor pitch procedure we had to have a clear idea what needed to be done and by whom. It was my task to lay out all tasks and see who would do what given a certain time.
Part of this session involved:
Desktop research
To be able to meet all customer requirements we had to perform several analyses:
1. Usability analysis
We did a screen by screen analysis of the most important pages e.g. the booking engine or the homepage for desktop and mobile. Per page we wrote down observations/usability issues and would describe how to improve on these. We wrote all down in the collaborative tool Miro.
2. Trends analysis
A hard requirement from the customer was a section to be included where we would show a good understanding of:
General design trends is describing design trends that are common place in the industry in a given amount of time e.g. design trends 2019. We needed to make the customer aware of these.
To uncover airline design trends we made a selection of leading airline websites based on industry awards, put them next to each other and see what they are doing similarly, differently and which latest design elements they used. Once you put them next to each other airlines design trends become apparent.
3. Customer reviews
To get a fast understanding of the user group's needs and expectationsI looked for customer reviews that centered around Changi airport and the existing iChangi app. There are several website where travelers can post reviews of their flight involving a particular airport. Two of these are Skytrax and Tripadvisor.
I analyzed a sample of the reviews and put the results in an Excel-sheet and divided it by topic e.g. type of traveler, pain point, experience at airport, date visit, wifi connectivity, recommendation etc. Both sites have different review criteria. By analyzing a big sample size and putting them next to each other in the sheets you start to see patterns. You can create pain point categories. These categories can in turn be used as design goals.
4. Products & services analysis
The customer requested an overview of Vietnam Airlines products and services. I analyzed the existing website and put all products and services in a sheet.
5. Customer target group
To get a good understanding of the user groups we had several activities:
The last two will be discussed more in-depth below.
Survey to persona
To do some actual "away from desk" user research we created a survey to get a good impression of part of the user group. We asked them about there travel habits and handed out a paper survey out to colleagues because of limited time and effort in searching of actual user group. We gave out a paper survey to colleagues during lunch and approached other people trough messaging tools. The users we targeted were locals and expat with varying degrees of experience with traveling. The downside of this approach is that results are one-sided and doesn't cover the entire user group for a project of this size. However, the results in the Excel sheet showed a clear picture of that part of the target group. This data can then be transformed into a persona.
Interview flight attendant
We not only approached the actual user group but also approached people who know the user group best: the flight attendants. While they take care of the user group during the flight they communicate constantly with them thus know their wishes and needs.
Mindmap insights
All research findings were finally put in a mindmap and shared with all designers so all available data for the actual design is available to all and in an condensed and usable form.
Detailed UI design
All data was used as input for the design. However, because of time restrictions detailed UI design started quite early in the project. Because of so many insights we created several detailed designs for desktop and mobile. The booking engine flow also got a redesign.
I'd like to share some of the detailed UI designs here. However, because of the sensitive nature of the content and unknown what stage of development the project currently is I'm not able to share that at the moment. If you'd like to see more, please ask me for it.
Prototype
The detailed UI design were turned into a prototype and paper/booklet version for presentation purposes.
