DESIGN CHALLENGE - 2021
EasyJet
ROLE
UX Lead— Researching, Wireframing, Branding, Prototyping
TIMEFRAME
48 Hours
TOOLS
Figma, Illustrator
TEAM
Samanta Hansel
Chanelle Miller
Overview
Placed 4th at the 2021 Reply Challenge out of 2000 applicants. With only a team of two and 48 hours to complete, EasyJet challenged us to re-design their user web and app experience and inspire travellers to explore new destinations and jump on the latest opportunities.
As a team of Canadian travel enthusiasts, we first encountered easyJet on our Erasmus semester in university. We remembered being in a new continent for the first time, not knowing where to go but wanting to see everything. When booking trips, we would toggle between travel guides, trip itineraries, Google Maps and our calendars. So when EasyJet challenged designers to re-imagine the travel search experience, we jumped at the opportunity.
Problem
The process of booking travel has become stagnant. The standard approach to search for flights or holidays is to allow users to enter "From", "To", "When", and "Who" before displaying the relevant results.
The classic search approach assumes travellers know exactly where they want to go and when. This is a problem because travelers will miss out on opportunities to see new places, and easyJet will miss out on additional bookings.
HOW MIGHT WE,
Create a platform that inspires travelers who don't know where they want to go yet and allow them to book, budget-friendly flights, and holidays in a fast and seamless way?
Solution
Our solution is the introduction of a new branch of easyJet called easyExplore. The idea is to elevate easyJet to incorporate a travel guide that inspires users to book their next trip. By taking users through an onboarding questionnaire, EasyExplore can generate curated trip suggestions for different travellers based on their interests.
It is important to incorporate the 'exploration' aspect of travel from the initial stages of trip planning.
Establishing a User Journey
Our solution is the introduction of a new branch of easyJet called easyJet Explore. The idea is to elevate easyJet to incorporate a travel guide that inspires users to book their next trip. By taking users through an onboarding questionnaire, EasyExplore can generate curated trip suggestions for different travelers based on their interests. It is important to incorporate the 'exploration' aspect of travel right from the initial stages of trip planning.
Onboarding Questionnaire
EasyJet wants users to start exploring before they've even left their couch. We created a user journey that goes from broad to specific, to help travelers decide on their next trip. We designed a fun, engaging, and easy five-step onboarding questionnaire. Users answer the questions, and easyExplore generates the perfect holiday suggestions.
Travel Guide
Travelers can explore a unique travel guide about a location of their choosing. From here they can get inspired to book new experiences, find places to eat, or read articles about the location they're chosen. Users can also, "Add to my easyTrip". This feature allows users to create travel mood boards and itineraries which will continue to inspire them to book their next trip and/or flight.
Designing for a Mobile Experience
Research & Emphasizing
We completed a Benchmark Analysis to compare easyJet's existing platform to the best practices in the industry. This involved researching other travel related companies, airlines and easyJet's competitors.
We then created a PACT Analysis that helped our team narrow down our research and determine our main problem, solution, and user personas.
User Personas
Name: Jack
Gender: Male
Age: 24 years old
Scenario: planning a bachelor party trip for his mate.
Jack is passionate about beer, music, and a good deal. He will be traveling with 5 other groomsmen and the groom who have put all the responsibility on poor Jack. He would like to travel to a city in Eastern Europe that has lots of hot clubs to party hard and celebrate. Although, he has been struggling with keeping the trip on budget and accommodating all of the members participating in the trip. This is Jack's first time planning a trip and he is worried about getting all of the logistics organized.
Ideation
We used sticky-notes to create categories of ideas. From this point we were able to get a good sense of what features our solution needed to include in order to meet the needs of our users and answer the brief.
Low Fidelity Mockups
Our next step is to get the bad ideas out on paper. We prefer to brainstorm and draw a rough road-map on paper before digitizing our ideas.
Mid-Fidelity Mockups
We started by designing the functionality of the website with grey squares and a rough draft of what the text might say in each part of the experience. We made sure to do a thorough job in this process to assure an easy transition into the high fidelity mockups as the deadline was approaching.
Home Page
On-boarding Journey Part 1
Easy Explore Page
Destination Blog
Branding a Calm Experience
Travelling can be stressful, so we refined easyJet's brand elements, colours, and typography to create a calm booking experience. Elevating the user's experience creates trust and drives value. We muted the 100% black used on easyJet's existing website and incorporated vibrant colours to grasp the users' interest with the hope of increasing the site's conversion rate.
Primary Colour
#FF7A00
RGB 255, 122, 0
CMYK 0, 52, 100, 0
Primary
Colour
#4F4F4F
RGB 79, 79, 79
CMYK 0, 0, 0, 69
Primary
Colour
#EDEDED
RGB 237, 237, 237
CMYK 0, 0, 0, 7
Secondary Colour
#060178
RGB 6, 120, 1
CMYK 95, 93, 0, 53
Secondary Colour
#B596C6
RGB 181, 150, 198
CMYK 9, 24, 0, 22
UI Elements
Illustrations
