easyGo
easyGo is a website feature for students to have a fruitful exchange experience in Europe. It aims to strengthen easyJet’s competition within the budget airline sector, by introducing a fun and engaging short trip planner to enhance exchange student journeys in Europe.
8 Weeks Senior Experience Design Project
Client: EasyJet
Role: Interface Design, Video Editing, UX Research, Usability Testing
Team: Alfred Zhang, Alison Chan, Elly Wei, Maggie Chan, Sophia Lee
Business Problem
easyJet is a low-cost airline company in Europe, showed a significantly slow revenue growth rate and lack of aspirational value amongst its competitors.
Research Insight
1
Strengthen brand value: fun + engaging as aspirational value for the customer
In our secondary research, we examined multiple travel review websites such as Tripadvisor, customer responses mainly consist of “lower price” and “variety of destinations”. Brand value of fun and engaging is rarely mentioned by them.
We looked into easyJet’s 5 brand pillars, by anchoring their perception and personality of fun + engaging, easyJet can focus on the aspirational value that their competitors lack.
How might we interfere as the outside designer to strengthen their brand value through UI/ UX ?
2
Exchange students: an opportunity for easyJet to intervene
Each year there are 1.3 million exchange students that would travel to Europe for the well-known sights and cultural experiences.
How might we identify the target demographic who would continuously use low-budget airlines to travel within Europe leisurely?
We want to collect more insight through 113 non-European respondents that have experience studying abroad in Europe. Along with 5 interviews to further understand the demographic’s travel habits and inspiration. The surveys show that exchange student
1) prefers short trips over long trips and
2) open perception of where to travel next.
They seek to efficiently travel to as many destinations as possible with a limited budget during their short period of stay, where easyJet has an opportunity to intervene as a supporter for enhancing the aspirational values of exchange student short trip experience.
3
Pivoting the journey: before + after travel
In our Secondary research, we looked into the check-in, in-flight and travel stage, as they were the frequent pain point from customers.
After narrowing down our persona, we realize the level of engagement are low during the travel phase because in-flight experience has cost-limitation and students are busy enjoying their trip.
By mapping the researched travel behaviour, we then pivoted to the planning + considering and after travel stage, where students can freely engage with the end product.
Helping them decide their next destination while leveraging what they value — which are time and money — could lower student's cognitive overhead when searching places to explore.
Proposed Intervention
We proposed an aspirational planner during the exchange, 1) to strengthen the aspirational value of easyJet to out win the competitors and 2) to heighten fun and engaging travel experience of exchange students by supporting them through planning + considering stage.
The digital intervention aims to close the gap between easyJet's existing services and the travel habits of exchange students. We believe easyJet’s supportive travel planning can engage exchange students to further explore for fun travel experiences.
Feature Breakdown
1
3-minute onboarding
Entry point - An exchange student learns about easyGo through past exchange students, social media, or QR code posters in the university.
The onboarding allows easyGo to cater to their needs during the exchange journey, providing a tailored itinerary and carefree experience to the exchange student.
2
Progress Overview
The overview page allows exchange students to compare the information at a glance, providing easy access to decide the next destination.
Travel growth - Information includes travel timeline, total traveled distance, and must go cities for review of personal travel progress. Abroad information - Indicates the duration of exchange, schedule, and availability.
3
Selecting and exploring
easyGo will curate a list of personalized destinations, where exchange students can easily explore for efficient short trip planning
Exploration of destination can be easily accessed by comparing flight schedule and price within the destination card.
The calendar view can be toggled to review their schedule abroad.
Through streamlining exchange students' travel in Europe, we believe easyGo can help transform customers' current perception of easyJet, inspiring them to choose easyJet for their future travels.
Reflection
Through this academic project, I have developed a passion for conducting research to explain the logic behind proposal and design decisions.
We conducted thorough secondary research, examining easyJet's revenue growth reports, brand books, and travel review websites. For primary research, we distributed a survey to 26 different subreddits and Facebook groups related to travel, study abroad, and university. After four weeks, we finalized our research insights and began wire-framing, prototyping, and solidifying our proposal.
As the motion graphics and interaction design lead, the user testing helped me and my team make design decisions. Moreover, my role as facilitator during Sprint week highlighted the importance of time and project management within a team, as well as the ability to synthesize our insights into design decisions within a limited timeframe.