Problem Identified, Booking Confidence.

I recently traveled internationally with friends and was requested to help 3 of the eight friends buy their tickets. When I asked my friends why they did not want to purchase these flights, they told me the task was too confusing.

  • The best opportunity to learn was to re-create the scenario. A contextual inquiry and short Q&A would give framework to the problem.

    I reached out to Adam and his girlfriend Mia to run through a mock-booking exercise of searching for an international flight on AA.com.

    Giving both Adam and Mia the prompt of finding a round-trip flight, I had them both talk me through each step of buying the flight.

Prompt:

On AA.com book a flight from LA to Bali.

Departing Los Angeles on September 21st, Flight #AA8407, 1:30pm

Departing Bali, Denpasar on October 3rd, Flight #MH714, 12:55pm

  • Adam was able to complete the booking in 14:48. It took him multiple tries to find the correct outbound flight.

    He tried searching through a few of the filters in the drop-down only to keep showing more hidden results.

    “There is nowhere to type in the flight number or specific flight times.”

“When I see all the dates and times, I am overwhelmed by the amount of information. I tend to forget exactly what I am looking for because of information overload”

  • Mia was able to complete the booking in 9:31 successfully. She struggled the most with finding the correct flight because it was hidden behind multiple pages, and she did know there were more flights behind the “show more” button.

    She struggled to find the drop-down for an additional filter. Once she was able to find the price (low to high) tab, the flight was the 1st choice. Once Mia had both the outbound and return flights selected, she was still timid with her decision and needed additional time to confirm the date, time, and flight number.

  • Both Adam and Mia noted that they prefer help for assurance on their questionnaire. An internal bot or group sharing option would help give travelers like Adam and Mia better assurance when booking a flight.