Pan American World Airlines, or Pan Am, was the largest and first international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until is stopped operating in December 1991. Pan Am’s popularity grew exponentially which made the company a cultural icon that could be compared to the likes of Coca Cola.
Known for its passenger experience being far ahead any other airline in the world, and their unmatched service Pan Am was called the Ritz-Carlton of Airlines. With many innovations to their credit the airline shaped international travel in the airline industry for years to come. Pan Am made travel by air accessible to a much wider audience, yet still keeping a high-end image by associating itself with celebrities, politicians and dignified pleasure seekers. Pan Am represented everything that was cool and glamorous about flying.
The Challenge
In the current climate of the airline industry’s penny-pinching, cattle herding in the sky business model, there is an opportunity in the market for Pan Am to come in and revolutionize the in air experience once again. I was tasked with creating a solution to develop a unique flying experience and interface that matches for an industry going in the wrong direction when it comes to the travel experience.
The Solution
Refresh and relaunch the Pan Am brand for the modern day consumer; reintroducing a premium experience that is sorely needed in the airline industry, reminiscent of the original Pan Am experience but for todays traveller. With its existing iconic history and brand identity this is the opportune time to refresh but more importantly restore nostalgic features into the flying experience such as unmatched quality service a cut above the rest and ample legroom all starting in their economy class. The promise of the Pan Am brand will again be a promise of an elevated, thought-through online and offline experience, similar to its legendary service of its past.
My Role
Although rivals is a real brand and this solution is a real need in the industry I completed this as a capstone project as part of DesignLab’s UX Academy in January 2018. I implemented the design thinking process to deliver user research, information architecture, wireframes, usability testing and user interface design.
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The Process
Based on user research, the process will be completely user centered from start to finish making changes based only on user feedback from product iterations.
Research
During the research phase I was able to pin down a few people to get their insights. A few worked inside of the travel industry while most others didn’t. I also built and administer an online survey gaining data from 55 respondents. I was able to better understand the target user’s mindset from these valuable insights.
Through this process I was able to empathize with users, which led to creating an empathy map and persona that represented users. The key insight was that users wanted to feel like they got their money’s worth, rather that feeling like they were shoved into a small uncomfortable space, shoulder to shoulder for multiple hours.
The user wants to enjoy their travels when paying so much to fly short and long distances. They not only want to feel taken care of during the flight, but from the very first touch point when booking their travel adventure.
Strategy
Here is a sitemap created for the Pan Am site infrastructure. With the request of forward thinking and making the booking process very simple to encourage more people to eventually book via mobile devices; I built out simple clear pages for the search and booking of flights.
Sitemap
Userflow to Purchase
Interaction
In past and now moving into the future, Pan Am has and will always be an influencer and tastemaker in the travel industry. With the sophistication and style of the Ritz-Carlton and the quality and cool of Nike, the UI would need to reflect that; along with in air experience. During ideation, I developed sketches focused on the search and booking process; because scrolling is so widely used in UIs I thought this would be useful to easily move through this process. During my research users did use mobile devices on mostly last minute occasions to book flights. Simplifying the process and allowing users to easily scroll from search to payment will prompt users to book more often and eventually encourage more bookings via mobile devices.
Once the sketches were solid I moved to wireframing the concept. My vision of having multiple sections in one scrollable page was a little more complicated than I originally thought. The main problem I had to think through is when scrolling back to make a change how does the user stay on the page without it reloading the original information. Without backend developers at my disposal I envision that the original searched flight information would preload and stay on the page. If a user was to go back to make a change the information would still be there. The information would only change if the user decided to search for new destinations.
Key Screens
With both the wires and style guide complete I then put together the high fidelity visuals. I created key screens to represent the homepage, and the search and book function. Due to project timelines I would not conduct usability testing to support further iterations of this project.
Conclusion
A few things were uncovered during this study. Users like flight comparison sites because they can compare flights to find cheaper tickets. However, this is not the root of the problem, comfort, in-flight meals and entertainment are the problem.
Users are chasing the cheapest flights because they are being provided the cheapest seats that are small, uncomfortable, and offer little no legroom. Whether the flight duration is short or long, the meals being provided are unsatisfactory and only few carriers have in-flight entertainment in economy. These three things lead to an overall unpleasant flying experience. Thus, if users feel the flying experience with any airline will be uncomfortable with terrible food, and no entertainment, then they will hunt like savages for the cheapest flight available. Leading to 0 loyalty to any one carrier.
Pan Am has solved these issues by providing each user with larger comfortable seating, great food and in-flight entertainment. Ticket prices are not the issue, the overall travel experience and comfort within it are what we have solved. Pan Am believes that via the research findings, even if pricing is a little more expensive, user will pay a touch more for comfort, great food and entertainment.
To further ease the users overall experience Pan Am has developed a simplified, single page scroll booking experience. This will allow for users to quickly and easily book flights via desktop. However, it will encourage users to move to the mobile platforms to book after experiencing the ease of the desktop userflow.
