Southwest Flight Exchange

A case study creating a new feature to modify an existing flight.

Deliverable
Design System

Team
3 Product Designers

Client
Upside Business Travel

Date
01/2021

Overview

Problem Definition & Context

Southwest is one of the more popular airlines purchased by our customers. Due to this popularity, our Stakeholders have expressed that there has been demands to create a way for users to have more experiences with their Southwest booking and align extra features closer to what Southwest offers on their website. Also, due to the transition of Southwest using NDC rather than Sabre as their GDS, we needed to create an entirely new experience to serve the NDC GDS system.

There have been multiple new features that have rolled out due to this alignment, and the last large project is creating a way for customers to be able to modify an existing flight.

Approach & Solution

Provide customers with the ability to modify their Southwest flights by airport, date, and time, including difference in price.

​Our scrum team had 3 months to have this feature launched so we worked within a 12 week sprint. Once a week we had planning to make sure we were on track with what went right and things we can improve on. Designs were due around the half way mark of the iteration, to make sure there was enough time for development and testing.

Customer & Business Impact

In order to stay on track of Upside's OKR for Q1 2021, one of our goals into developing NDC Exchange for Flight Self Service was to create a self service modification for UBT flight exchange for Southwest.

Our goal is to use ATPCO's NDC Exchange to shop and book Southwest (WN) fares, to unlock ability to add Early Bird, and to issue travel credits as applicable, so that the platform can ensure we get full inventory and accurate prices. Overall this will improve the customer experience!

In order to go live with our integration, Southwest and ATPCO require a site review.

The key requirements of the site review are in this iteration :

  • Shop, book, and ticket Southwest Airlines fares and schedules

  • Modify and cancel any previous itinerary

As the Senior Product Designer, I worked within a scrum team of a Project Manager, Lead Engineer and 6 Engineers.  I was responsible for conducting competitor analysis, designing user flows and wireframes to clarify product requirements, creating interactive prototypes, and designing high-fidelity mock-ups for engineers.

I also worked closely with the Engineers to understand technical feasibility, testing once the product was ready to launch, addressed bugs and created a flawless experience.

My Role

Upside Business Travel is a corporate platform that provides digital services and support to small and midsize companies. To help travelers and organizations save time and money when they book trips, the platform aligns their wants and needs, reduces friction and frustration, and offers new levels of freedom and control.