Alaska Airlines is the 5th largest airline in the U.S. It has long been loved by its guests and has consistently earned guest loyalty and won plenty of awards. As a result, they have earned the status as the west coast’s premier airline.
The way Alaska showed up in a competitive e-commerce space didn’t do justice to their reputation of legendary customer service. More seriously, it held them back from growth and exposure. And their aviation competitors were aggressively encroaching on their territory, both physically and digitally. In a rapidly changing environment, Alaska Airlines needed to make some significant changes, and a website overhaul was a top priority.
Create Alaska Air's first major e-commerce overhaul in over a decade.
Working closely with my product team, these key success metrics were identified:
I was the lead Sr. Visual/UI Designer on the content product team for alaskaairlines.com and was responsible for the re-design of crucial pages such as the homepage and several other content pages.
Responsibilites included:
My product team also consisted of a UX researcher that I worked closely on this project. Together, we would drive the product forward. I also collaborated with our content team that included a product manager, a copywriter, and several developers.
The UX manager along with UX researchers led discovery workshops with Alaska Airline customers to gather existing pain points and user insights about the current experience. I collaborated in these sessions to learn more about Alaska's guests and gain empathy.
Alaska Airlines has several personas and user groups but our team made sure to focus on our top users while still keeping all of our users in mind. Those core users were called "MVP Elites". Our UX research team crafted the persona. It was important for me to address the main user needs when redesigning the homepage, and having direct access to these users truly helped me address their needs and pain points throughout the process.
Sketches & Wireframes
As I normally do, I started the development and ideation process with a white boarding session involving my team to generate some quick concepts but also to get the team inspired and thinking out of the box.
Prototyping
After sketching various possible solutions, I created a prototype of an MVP that I would allow me to test and gather quick user insights that address the core pain points.
I paired with the UX researcher on my team and conducted several usability tests. We started testing our early concepts that were in grayscale wireframes to validate and solidify core functionality and usability issues before addressing the visual design. My studies were focused mostly on the homepage and a few core content templates.
I paired with the UX researcher on my team and conducted several usability tests. We started testing our early concepts that were in grayscale wireframes to validate and solidify core functionality and usability issues before addressing the visual design. My studies were focused mostly on the homepage and a few core content templates.
Key results
After several design sprints and months of testing, we finally launched the new Alaska Airline responsive website with great success. The new website was now on par with the legendary friendly and approachable customer service that Alaska's guests praise and love.
A welcoming homepage. Not only did my new homepage solution look welcoming and inviting, but it also prioritized the most relevant information—such as booking or checking into your flight, or searching for important information before a trip. And since a booking journey includes multiple devices, my solution achieved the goal of consistency across multiple platforms, not only making the experience more aesthetically pleasing but also helping reduce user friction and cognitive load along the way.
I worked closely and intensively with my product team's developers and lead UX counterpart to build Alaskaair.com's first digital style guide and pattern library. I started with a UI audit of all the digital components and eventually led workshops with interdisciplinary teams to determine core elements and come up with a common language that would work for all Alaska Air's digital products.
The new design solution was a successful MVP. It addressed the user pain points and met the business goals that we had defined. As happy as I was with the outcome—I wasn't satisfied. There were so many ideas and concepts that didn't see the day of light due to time and tech constraints. Some of my ideas included a completely different mental model of booking a flight as well as elegant motion, and micro-interactions, that would make the experience feel more dynamic and lively.
Want to learn more about this project? Contact me at luis@designlp.com
