Role: Solo UX Designer
Team: Independent project, as part of my Professional Diploma in UX Design
Year: 2023
Timeline: 6-month course (part-time)

Overview

Fly UX is a mobile flight booking experience designed to be simple, clear, and user-friendly. I designed it as part of my 6-month Professional UX Diploma course, with the UX Design Institute.

I led the project solo – conducting competitive analysis, user research, and usability testing to uncover common booking frustrations. I then translated those insights into a streamlined, mid-fidelity prototype focused on reducing clutter, surfacing key actions, and building user trust. After receiving feedback from real users and mentors, I then transformed the prototype into a refined, high-fidelity product.

The prototype can be viewed here.

Challenge

Booking a flight on mobile can feel overwhelming and confusing — especially for non-frequent flyers.

My client, a startup airline, wanted to create a faster, easier, and more intuitive mobile booking experience — one that feels clean, transparent, and grounded in real user needs.

The challenge: how might we reimagine flight search and selection to reduce friction and help users feel in control throughout the booking process?

Status Quo

I began by conducting in-depth research to understand the current landscape and user pain points. This included:

1. Competitive benchmarking of airline and travel apps: easyJet, British Airways, Qatar Airways, and Skyscanner — providing a mix of budget, premium, and aggregator experiences.

2. Usability testing analysis from Aer Lingus and Eurowings test sessions.

3. My own online survey and user testing, to deepen qualitative insights.

These activities revealed consistent issues: unclear navigation, poor information architecture, excessive cognitive load, and surprise fees. This research provided a strong foundation to define user needs and spot opportunities to design a more seamless booking flow.

Process

My design process followed a structured UX approach, moving from insights to synthesis, then on to ideation and prototyping:

Step 1: Affinity Diagram
Created in Miro to cluster user pain points and themes.

Step 2: Customer Journey Map
Designed in Figma to highlight emotions and touchpoints across the booking flow.

Step 3: Flow Diagram
Created in FigJam to visualise a cleaner, step-by-step user journey.

Step 4: Sketches
Drawn in Procreate to quickly explore layout and interaction ideas.

Step 5: Mid-fidelity Prototype
Built in Figma, focused on mobile-first UX. The prototype can be viewed here.

Step 6: Usability Testing
Conducted with family, friends, and course mentors via Zoom and in-person. Feedback highlighted clarity, ease, and trust in the flow.

Step 7: High-fidelity Prototype
Built in Figma to elevate my design, after feedback and suggestions from users and course administrators around adding more detail. I used a blend of the iOS 16 and Tripma UI kits to bring this prototype to life. The prototype can be viewed here.

Step 8: Annotations
Final step included design annotations for developers to ensure a clean, handoff-ready prototype.