2023

Cathay

Background

Cathay offers scheduled passenger services to over 60+ countries in 190 destinations. Customers can book flights, hotels, flights+hotels, activities & cars through their holidays category powered by Expedia & Hertz which charges 15%-25%. UXcel hosted a global design contest with the theme of designing a search & booking experience for holiday events & experiences. Let's assume Cathay aims to scale/personalise its digital experiences for the future internally to avoid external costs, Focusing on holiday events initially due to a competitive advantage & not experiences.

Skills

Competitive analysis, Effort/Impact matrix, Interaction & Visual design, Prototype

Hypothesis

If customers try to look for holiday events with Cathay, Then they may book based on their personal preferences. If customers try to look for flights with Cathay, Then they may add holiday events based on their personal preferences.

Outcome

Conversion rates No.of flight tickets & events booked. I was shortlisted in the top 10% among 150+ global submissions. To continuously improve & evaluate the designs, Monitoring the task completion rates & using a mixed-method approach at regular intervals both quantitatively & qualitatively may further help in the future.

Meet-up & Eventbrite are the only places to look for events globally

Competitive analysis

British Airways offers holiday events in limited countries, Thai & British Airways also offers experiences in limited countries. Emirates, Expedia & Trip in almost all countries. Apart from flights+hotels, None of the competitors cross-sell experiences. More than 50% of the researched competitor’s digital experience is needlessly complicated & outdated.

Features

British Airways offers book now & pay later with flexible instalments, Emirates offers tour guides & last-minute cancellations. Expedia & Trip provides last-minute deals for unplanned holidays, Meet-up & Eventbrite are personalised based on interests & current location.

Customers might plan & book for their events before or during their holidays

Customer journey

Relied on secondary research, I explored 2 journeys that might occur at different intervals when customers try to plan for their holiday events. xxx

Validation

Since this is a design contest with just a two-week timeline, I didn’t have time to validate the hypothesis. Given time, The plan is to conduct user interviews with 3-5 potential customers from diverse backgrounds & identify the needs by clustering similar themes using affinity mapping or categorising them by a jobs-to-be-done framework. In a realistic scenario, Validating might include but is not limited to, Setting up surveys with a larger sample size, Conducting user interviews & mapping the user journeys across different customer segments to expose real pain points.

High Effort / Low Impact vs Low Effort / High Impact

xxx

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Site map audit

Cathay currently lets its customers book flights, hotels, flights+hotels internally, It also allows them to book hotels, flights+hotels & activities externally through Expedia from both its flights & holidays category. For this exercise, It made sense for me to experiment from the top-level holidays category since we only have one single experience to start with & possibly take it to the flights category later based on the learnings & needs in the future. In a realistic scenario, The deciding factors may include but are not limited to existing traffic, conversions, marketing needs & experience goals between both pages.

User flow

Given time, The plan was to conduct usability testing to understand the existing flight booking experience & identify areas for improvements to inform the design decisions for the new version. In a realistic scenario, Validating might include using a mixed-method approach at regular intervals both quantitatively & qualitatively.

Design system & components

To understand their current visual design direction & components being used I looked into the booking flows from the homepage covering one-way & return trips, Separate booking flow from a different page for the multi-city/stopover The visual language was mixed between its marketing side of things like the landing pages compared to its product side of things like the booking & checkout,

Identified key interaction touchpoints, Established success metrics & final goals

Landing page

Designed 2 versions, Version A is the current version, Designed to act as its control group with 90% of the traffic diverted solely due to its wide variety of experiences available for booking powered by Expedia & hertz which charges 15%-25%. Version B is the new version, Designed to act as its test group with 10% of the remaining traffic due to its one single experience available for booking for experimental purposes. The plan is to A/B test these two versions with the target being 75%-100% conversion rates before rolling out the new version to a wider audience, Subject to the validation of needs & design readiness for other possible experience categories.

Booking & Checkout

Simplified with regulatory guidelines & best practices in mind. Events are recommended both for one-way & return trips & will work in partnership with Meet-up & Eventbrite initially. To check the API requirements xxx

User testing

Given time, Testing the user experience might have involved understanding the cross-selling booking experience in an un-moderated setting to understand the drop-off rates.

“Thank you for taking part in our very first design contest. It was truly a magical experience for us to gather people like you”

Gene Kamenez / CEO & Co-Founder @ Uxcel