South West Airlines
A mobile solution transforming air travel with personalized guidance, reducing stress from preparation to destination.
As Lead Interaction Designer and Senior Resource, I spearheaded the development of an innovative iOS application that transforms the air travel experience. The solution simplifies and enhances every stage of a passenger's journey, from departure to destination.
Working within a hybrid agile framework, I delivered a modular system with intelligent scheduling, real-time notifications, and in-airport navigation. The application achieved a 4.5 rating from 3,000 beta testers, demonstrating my ability to translate complex needs into elegant, scalable solutions while maintaining strong stakeholder
ROLE
Senior UI/UX and IDX
TIMELINE
2018-2020
LOCATION
Bangalore - USA
Southwest Airlines established measurable targets and achieved exceptional results across all key performance indicators, demonstrating the application's significant impact on both customer experience and business operations.
4.5
by 3000+ Users
Customer Experience
Customer Engagement
Operational Efficiency
Digital Transformation
Business Dimension
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Active users on day of travel
Gate agent inquiries per
100 passengers
Paperless boarding adoption
Key Performance Indicator
+12 Points
65%
-25%
+20%
Target
+15 Points
78%
-32%
+30%
Actual Outcome
Our five-member team was strategically assembled to harness each person's unique talents, emphasizing innovation. In a hybrid design setting for the Southwest Airlines project, specialization paired with interdependency allowed for focused research and effective responsibility sharing. This approach ensured flexible adaptation, problem-solving, and the achievement of high-quality outcomes within set deadlines.
Driving Design Success as Lead Interaction Designer
Product Innovation
Drove the project by integrating and validating innovative features to meet user needs and client expectations.
Design Execution
Created key UX components, including micro-interactions and animations, to improve the user interface and experience.
User-Centered Innovation
Integrated user feedback into the design process, exceeding user expectations for functionality and ease of use.
Technical and Creative Oversight
Ensured all design outputs adhered to the highest standards of quality and innovation.
As Senior Designer
Design Advocacy
Advocated for design priorities in client discussions and internal meetings, promoting design-led thinking.
Agile Design Process
Managed the design process within a hybrid agile framework, ensuring flexibility and timely deliverables.
Client Engagement
Led client interactions, aligning with strategic business and design goals.
Strategic Design Planning
Strategized the overarching design direction, aligning with both client goals and long-term project vision.
Southwest Airlines identified these stressors as diminishing customer experience and saw an opportunity to use technology to transform travel from an inconvenience to a more controlled, manageable experience.
Security anxiety
87% of travelers
Gate change disruptions
Affecting 27% of flights
Navigation confusion
62% of travelers
Airport commute concerns
73% worried about timing
An innovative mobile application to transform the travel experience by addressing passengers' key pain points throughout their journey while reinforcing Southwest Airlines' commitment to exceptional customer care.
Deliver contextual, real-time information based on location and journey stage
Give travelers control through timely notifications and guidance
Provide human-centered support acknowledging travel stress
Use Southwest's brand personality to make travelers feel cared for
Applied empathetic problem-solving through the Double Diamond approach (Discover → Define → Develop → Deliver) to understand travelers' pain points and create solutions centered on reducing stress and improving the travel experience.
Served as evaluation criteria throughout development, ensuring all solutions aligned with core brand values:
- In Control (giving travelers agency),
- Human (acknowledging emotions),
- Fearless (innovative approaches),
- Love (creating caring experiences).
Identified specific functional and emotional tasks travelers need to accomplish at each journey stage, translating abstract needs (feeling secure, reducing anxiety) into concrete features (real-time notifications, personalized guidance).
Created a comprehensive visualization connecting user needs, emotions, touchpoints, and business opportunities across the entire travel journey, serving as the foundation for feature prioritization and cross-functional alignment.
What are the activities that you do after the gate is prepared ?
How are you informed of the assigned flight information?
Conducted 10 in-depth interviews with frequent travelers (each lasting approximately 1 hour)
Performed in-airport user testing with actual Southwest customers
Mapped customer journeys across all touchpoints
Analyzed competitive offerings from other airlines
Reviewed existing customer feedback data
Studied industry trends and pain points
Initial research generated approximately 150-180 questions across the travel journey. These were refined to 50 critical questions that guided subsequent user interactions.
32%
The Business Traveler
This group consists of technologically adept, socially engaged, and economically astute travelers who primarily travel for business purposes.
Frequency: Multiple times a month
Budget: Moderate to high
41%
The Holiday Maker
These are travelers whose main intention is to escape from their daily routines, typically opting for vacations that involve staying at resorts, relaxing, or participating in organized tours.
Frequency: Several times a year
Budget: Low to moderate
27%
The Casual Traveler
This category includes adventurers who eschew traditional holiday patterns in favor of discovering new destinations and seizing every travel opportunity that arises.
Frequency: Frequently throughout the month
Budget: Moderate to high
Concept development
The team mapped the entire travel ecosystem through service design principles, examining frontstage interactions, backstage processes, support systems, and handoff points to ensure the application complemented existing touchpoints rather than creating disconnected experiences.
Journey-Driven Design Framework
The Journey-Driven Design Framework organized the travel experience into five distinct stages: preparation, transit to airport, airport navigation, in-flight, and arrival. For each stage, the framework analyzed specific traveler needs, emotions, and stress points to create contextually relevant solutions.
Travel Preparation
Pre-Departure Planning
Traveling to the Airport
At the Airport
During the Flight
At the Destination Airport
Ideation Methodology
During the ideation phase, we employed a modified version of the Crazy 8s technique. Participants focused on one specific phase of the user journey at a time, brainstorming solutions within a tight two-minute window to address the user pain points identified for that stage.
This rapid ideation method was systematically applied across all seven stages of the user journey to ensure comprehensive coverage and innovative solution generation.
8 Participants, 12 Minutes, ¬ 230 Ideas
Prioritization Matrix
In the prioritization phase, all ideas generated during the ideation sessions were organized into cohesive groups to form holistic feature sets.
A prioritization exercise was conducted, assigning each idea a score based on its ‘value to the client’ and ‘value to the user’. These scores were then used to plot the ideas on a matrix that evaluates ‘client value vs. user value’.
Ideas positioned in the top quadrant of this matrix were selected for further design and development, ensuring both client satisfaction and user benefit
Ideas ¬ Grouped into Ideas
Value to user
Value to business
Execution Framework
In the design stage, each feature was addressed individually, starting with the most complex features to establish a solid design foundation. The process for developing each feature was structured as follows:
Southwest's "Day of Travel" app transforms air travel by addressing pain points with real-time, contextual information. It provides journey management through adaptive timelines, airport navigation with crowd indicators, and flight status updates that create a sense of control while embodying Southwest's brand pillars.
Emotional State
Baseline%
With App%
Anxious
63%
28%
Frustrated
58%
24%
Confident
31%
68%
In Control
28%
72%
Prepared
35%
79%
Testing Insights
The usability testing revealed several critical insights
Terminology Challenges
Users misinterpreted "Travel Plan" as itinerary editing rather than the intended day-of-travel guidance
Changed terminology to "Plan" to reduce confusion
Information Hierarchy
Users prioritized immediate next steps over full journey view
Redesigned screens to emphasize current and next actions
Notification Preferences
Users wanted more control over alert types
Added notification settings to allow personalization
Accessibility Issues
Text size and contrast needed improvement
Icon dimensions required enlargement for better visibility
Key findings influenced subsequent releases
Users skipped permission screens during onboarding (52% skip rate)
Redesigned to make value proposition clearer, reducing skip rate to 28%
Airport amenities section had 3.2x higher engagement than anticipated
Expanded amenities information based on this insight
92% of users reported the app was "extremely valuable" during flight delays
84% cited exceptional utility during gate changes or rebooking scenarios
87% found high value during weather disruptions
Integrated Experience Delivery Model
Southwest Airlines developed a proprietary Integrated Experience Delivery Model that revolutionized their approach to travel experience design.
Balanced user value, business metrics, technical feasibility, and brand alignment
Applied systematically across planning, development, testing, and optimization
Prevented single-dimension optimization at the expense of others
This framework has since become standard practice across the organization's experience design projects.
Design Process Insights
The project revealed four crucial design process insights that transformed their approach to travel experience innovation.
In-context research delivered 3.5x ROI through reduced development iterations
Mindset-based personas proved more effective than demographic categorization
Quantified metrics streamlined prioritization and accelerated decision-making
Cross-functional collaboration with shared ownership eliminated rework
These insights fundamentally changed how Southwest approaches experience design projects.
Business Strategy Insights
The three key business strategy insights that enhanced Southwest's approach to innovation.
Progressive innovation model (concept → mock-up → pilot → scale) effectively managed risk
Integrated analytics and quantifiable metrics proved essential for business case validation
Strong product owner relationships and regular insight sharing enabled design freedom
These strategic approaches have since been integrated into Southwest's product development methodology.
