I joined as a UX and UI Designer at the start of the project from a third party agency ‘Empathy Lab’. While the in-house Aer Lingus design team was taking care of the website, we were focusing on the application. The main goals were to encourage sales and develop loyalty.

Following a product assessment, we noticed that the booking process was not intuitive nor engaging and not compliant with IOS7 Design guidelines.

Who flies? How often? How do they feel about flying and what exactly is flying? Flying not only encapsulates the experience in-plane but also extends throughout the booking flow, from planning to departure and arrival at a customer’s final destination, your hotel, your home, wherever it may be.

Following the market research we realised that, instead of creating yet another convenient tool, we could focus on making a companion, a concierge which could become indispensable to users. It would accompany customers through their travel (be helpful, reliable, provide timely information, store travelling docs…) and grow with them (know how to inspire them, give them relevant offers based on their profile and activity).

We designed a few screens to present our ideas: Inspire, shorten the booking process, excite and unveil features progressively.

To better identify features that could distinguish the Aer Lingus app from other airline applications, we traced the customer journey stretching from booking to landing using a timeline. We highlighted all stages, regular activities and every step in between, each of them benefiting customers or Aer Lingus. This helped us have an overview of the entire journey customers go through and the areas we could improve to provide a seamless experience when travelling with Aer Lingus.

Following an agile process, wireframes were produced according to epics and user stories with Omnigraffle. Our international team had regular phone meetings where we would run through the user stories and highlight key elements.

These design routes are proposing a visual adaptation inspired from the new website design. The look and feel is confident in its layout utilising the available screen real estate.

This is an overview of the Aer Lingus app. A relevant, informative, honest and engaging application going the extra mile to simplify your booking process, stay and grow with you every step of the way.