UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Individual
Figma, FigJam
I recently received a membership to Priority Pass, a network of more than 1,300 airport lounges. While I was thrilled at the idea of forgoing overpriced airport food and crowded gates, I quickly began to notice other travelers reporting difficulties online, including overcrowding and access issues.
This inspired me to take on a design challenge driven by the following question:
After reading other travelers’ feedback, I wanted to gain a better understanding of specific areas of friction in the current Priority Pass experience. To do so, I conducted three virtual, one-on-one user interviews with Priority Pass members who had visited a lounge more than once in the past year.
I organized insights from the interview sessions into an affinity map to more easily identify trends amongst the three participants. Participants validated many of the challenges shared online and raised additional concerns about the Priority Pass mobile app, which was their primary means of receiving information about lounges.
Ultimately, I distilled the affinity map into three major pain points to guide the next phase of the project:
Following user research, I translated each major pain point into an objective for the final design:
From these objectives, one message was clear—travelers need comprehensive, time-saving lounge information before their arrival. As a result, I set out to develop enhancements to the existing Priority Pass mobile app that would address this need.
To visualize potential enhancements, I first created some quick sketches before going digital for a higher fidelity set of wireframes.
In these wireframes, I focused on three main enhancements, each corresponding to one of the previously identified design objectives. I also wanted the design to reflect the busy airport conditions affecting travelers’ interactions with the app. Large touch targets, distinct call-to-action buttons, and keyboard-free input fields were included to accommodate travelers on the go.
After finishing the wireframes, I reached back out to interview participants for feedback on the initial design. While participants responded positively to the concept of the remote waitlist feature, they shared that it still didn’t tell them how much time they’d spend in line and that it wouldn’t be ideal to keep checking the app for status updates.
Before proceeding with the design, I made two changes to better address these concerns—adding estimated wait times to the waitlist confirmation message and providing an opt-in for push notifications.
After four weeks, three interviews, and many hours spent in Figma, I had envisioned a new experience for the Priority Pass mobile app. Here’s a brief look back at the project:
Challenges
Although I’m not affiliated with Priority Pass, throughout the project I tried to enforce constraints to better simulate what it would be like to work on a redesign project as a UX professional. Many of my ideas, such as an in-app reservation system, were ultimately deprioritized as I considered their complexity and viability.
Lessons learned
Redesigning an airport lounge app helped me see just how much a user’s surroundings can affect a given design. Asking myself questions like “How well would this solution work for someone walking through the terminal with an iPhone in one hand and a suitcase in the other?” served as a constant reminder that the designs I create don’t exist in a vacuum.
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