Launching a new price change Product for travel
Generative & Design Research
4 - 5 months || Mixed Methods || Lead Researcher
Background:
For savvy and price-sensitive travelers, finding the right time to book is . In response, the Insurance and Fintech team sought to create a product to mitigate that stressor. Despite limited discovery, the team also wanted to test this as a new benefit to the loyalty program. We had to nimbly create a path to integration in the customer journey, all while competing with other high-priority items in the funnel.
Our team wanted to give new life to a product that meant you didn’t have to seek out the “perfect” time to book their flight to make sure they had a good deal and weren’t overspending. Some of the key themes we revisited throughout the process were:
Discovering our users — Who faces this problem? How do they perceive budget, value, and loyalty?
Ecosystem Integration — How would a new product fit in and work alongside the base functionality of the app?
Making better design decisions — Our role is to facilitate seamless decision-making and find optimal placements in the customer journey
Process Highlights
My Role:
Since this project spanned several phases, I’ve divided them into those of a Decision Driven Framework of research to keep it brief.
Vision | Preliminary discovery phase:
Research Tasks: Literature reviews, Exploratory Interviews, Competitor analyses, and empathy mapping as a UX pod.
Key Findings: We identified areas of interest in the product, and created profiles for scenarios and user types. Our preliminary explorations showed concerns on price and value. We also found that discoverability was going to be a challenge.
Definition | Testing Placement options and Value Propositions:
Research Tasks: Usability and concept tests, leveraging RITE as needed.
Key Findings: A lot of options are easy to miss - emphasizing the need for better discoverability! We needed 'smart' placements to fit the context of the user's interaction. Unfortunately “Banner blindness” was persistent.
Strategy | Defining our content strategy & Refining our Design:
Research Tasks: Interviews, surveys, and a competitor product study.
Key Findings: Price, User education, and assurance are key! There is a curiosity and delight around the product that we can capitalize on! However, we also need to mitigate traveler's core apprehensions.
For the future, it will be really important to consider the cognitive load of all the different products and features that a user might encounter.
Evaluation | Final benchmarking and post launch metrics
We collected benchmarks as the product pre-launch and worked with product teams on A/B test options to implement. We also worked with Quant researchers on collecting unique post-launch usability metrics.
Impact:
Dynamic Evolution of Product Strategy:
We adapted swiftly based on research insights and delivered despite placement constraints. Key changes included promoting organic discovery, emphasizing clarity, and introducing users to loyalty program benefits.
New Partnerships with Teams:
Collaborating with partners across teams improved our work dynamics outside siloed teams. We developed a roadmap for evolving our shopping path and made new partners in design, data science, and product marketing.
Tracking Design Impact:
We introduced usability metrics alongside existing KPIs to demonstrate product engagement. We wanted to have insights to add nuance to discussions on business value.
Learnings:
Team Collaboration:
Even when delivering challenging findings, remember you work with—not against— your team.
Engage in 1:1s with project leads outside team-wide readouts to understand their perspective. This can help them process negative findings and help you collaborate on realistic recommendations.
Advocacy and Persistence:
Advocate for your recommendations, even if implementation takes time and can only be in 'future iterations'
Document research findings—they can resurface and inform future projects. This is how literature reviews are synthesized!
Leverage Your Network:
Connect with research colleagues to share insights. Work across spaces still share users and challenges, which is useful to learn from.
Sometimes connection can foster collaboration. For instance, I was able to incorporate some of our questions in a related research project to gather additional insights.