Destination Generator

British Airways: a fresh take on finding flights and using vouchers

A digital solution to encourage customers to use existing vouchers to book new flights

Role

Team Leader, UX Research, UX/UI Design

Research Methods

Desk Research

Tools

Figma, FigJam, GoogleMeets

Timeframe

24hr Hackathon

About

collaborative tech sprint in a cross-functional team

Objective

to create a digital solution to reduce the amount of unused vouchers by encouraging customers to use them

Problem Space

How might we encourage customers to book flights using their travel vouchers?

Key Goals

Identify reasons customers aren't redeeming vouchers
Encourage customers to use existing vouchers to purchase new flights
Discover what British Airways has already done, what worked and why?

View on GitHub

Meet the Team

Melicia

UX Designer

Mila

UX Designer

Edo

Data Scientist

Gabrielle

Software Engineer

Leighton

Software Engineer

Zeid

Software Engineer

Olusanya

Software Engineer

Discover

The Problem Space

British Airways customers whose flights or holidays were delayed or cancelled in 2020-2021 could exchange their payment for a voucher to use at a later time. Since 2020, many travel vouchers issued have gone unused.

The company intends to reduce the amount of unused vouchers by encouraging customers to se them.

Where can customers use their vouchers?

All flights, globally. Customers will not be able to redeem vouchers for BA holidays.

Desk Research: Quantitive Data

An exploration of the information available to us online

statistic_id309349_passengers-uplifted-by-british-airways-plc-2008-2022 1.png

75% drop in passengers flown by BA during COVID-19

"IAG, which owns airlines including BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus, reported more than €650million of unclaimed vouchers last Friday alongside its annual results for 2022, when the airline group swung back to a profit for the first time since the start of the coronavirus crisis."

Success of BA travel voucher reminder push:
700k voucher redemptions

BA took the step to mass email all voucher holders with a reminder email, alerting customers to their vouchers with the airline. This resulted in 700k vouchers being used/redeemed

Examples of what customers received and saw

Desk Research: Qualitative Data

What insights can we find about customers motivations, frustrations, and behaviours?

With such tight time constraints, we decided to look through multiple forums for answers to questions we would ask if we had the opportunity to conduct interviews.

“I have an e-voucher and I'm trying to figure out the best option?”

“what happens with the leftover amount if I don’t spend my full e-voucher amount?”

"I’m looking at booking a flight and hotel in the site and when I go through the steps I cannot see anywhere to apply to voucher. Am I doing something wrong?"

"Can I give them to my mom and she can book a trip with my dad? I'm a bit confused"

"What’s the best practice on how to transfer one of these?"

"I do not plan on taking any trips to the UK, are there literally any options available to me where I would be able to make use of this e-voucher?"

Insights from Forum Threads:

These three themes we reoccurring throughout our research

Unclear about voucher restrictions

No longer want to visit the same places

Maximise the value of their voucher

How Might We encourage customers to book flights using their travel vouchers?

Define

Collaborative Ideation:
Lightning Decision Jam

To ensure we utilised our team's diverse approach to problem solving, gain buy-in, and be on the same page with our solution; I facilitated and moderated a 'Lightning Decision Jam'.

LDJ (for short) is a framework used to ideate and prioritise solutions using a voting system and minimal unstructured speaking.

To learn more about Lightning Decision Jam framework, click here.

After presenting our research findings and completing the Lightning Decision Jam, we came to the conclusion that user's of British Airways have changed since COVID-19.

The qualitative information about the long-term impact of COVID-19 is still developing.

But what we do know is that people's circumstances and lives have changed dramatically over 2020 to 2022 - change of work, career transitions, grievances and loss, starting a family (children and pets), moving abroad.

We decided to empower people to find new places to travel that fit who they are now.

Define

Design

Developing Solutions

“Find Your Perfect Flight”
- personalising the process and making it easy!

A short quiz to generate destination suggestions in line with customers' voucher restrictions.

Example of the mid-fi and hi-fi wireframes created by the UX Designers for handover to the Software Engineers

Giving people a fresh take on finding flights.

Remove the restriction guesswork

Leverage existing e-voucher holder data

...and begin gathering new consumer insights for the future!

Mirroring British Airways' Current Design System

Don't fix what's not broken. BA has an iconic and clean UI style. We wanted to develop our UI to align with the current design style. This would allow for a polished, on brand look and seamless integration.