Flight Bookings as Stress-Free as the Holiday
Designing a Calmer Way to Fly
BoardNow is a website designed to make flight bookings as stress-free as the holiday itself.
This case study follows the journey from research to prototype, showing how a traditionally lengthy booking process can be simplified into a fast, focused experience.
Too Many Steps Before Take-off
Meet Jack - a busy father in his mid-thirties with two young kids and a full-time job. When he books flights, he doesn’t want distractions. He just wants to get it done quickly and move on.
When Jack tries to book a flight online, the process feels endless. Pop-ups, add-ons and advertisements interrupt the journey, turning a simple task into a frustrating one.
What Others Had to Say
To understand the problems Jack experienced, three participants were asked to book a flight using existing flight booking websites while speaking through their experience. The transcripts were collated and feedback was added to post-it notes with colour coding for ease - positive (green), neutral (yellow) and pain points (red).
Insights from the interviews were organised into categories using an affinity diagram to reveal common frustrations at all stages of the booking process. Like Jack, all users wanted speed and clarity but found themselves slowed down by cluttered interfaces and constant upsell prompts.
Making Sense of the Feedback
A journey map then visualised their experience throughout each part of the booking process, highlighting moments of confusion. Similar frustrations emerged of the lack of clarity throughout with ambiguous terminology and actions as well as too many distractions such as overwhelming home pages full of adverts, deals and pop-ups.
Journey Map
The biggest drop in satisfaction was related to the lengthy process - repeated decision points, filling out personal details multiple times, unnecessary add-ons and too much scrolling to find information.
With these insights, a simplified user flow was created. The goal was clear: help Jack move from search → select → confirm with as little friction as possible. Every step in the flow had to justify its existence.
The Ideal Flight Path
Using the user flow as a blueprint, early sketches explored how Jack could move quickly through the booking process. The layouts prioritised clarity, removing distractions and surfacing only the information needed to make a decision. The experience was designed so Jack could book a flight in just a few focused steps.
Sketching the Experience
The sketches evolved into interactive prototypes that simulated the streamlined booking journey.
With fewer decisions, cleaner screens, and minimal interruptions, the prototype showed how quickly Jack could move from search to confirmation.
Bringing it to Life
Every design decision focused on helping Jack book his flight faster whilst keeping it clear at all stages with a summary of the booking and costs seen at all times. A progress bar helped manage expectations and the optional add-ons were all grouped into one section. The interface was simplified to show only the most important choices first, allowing Jack to focus on selecting a flight and confirming his trip without distractions.
Key Design Decisions
The prototype was then tested with the same users which helped to identify further opportunities to simplify the journey. The final prototype reduced the number of steps in the booking journey to five and made each step as clear as possible. It was now then ready to pass onto a developer with a colour coding system in order to follow more efficiently.
Challenges & Iterations
Jack and other users were able to book a flight quickly and confidently, without unnecessary decisions. Booking a flight finally felt as smooth as the trip Jack was looking forward to.