UX, UI, Service Design
B2b Portal
Project Overview
BLADE is a technology-powered, global urban air mobility platform committed to reducing travel friction by enabling cost-effective air transportation alternatives to some of the most congested ground routes in the U.S. and abroad.
CMO and Partnerships approached tech with an ask to build a portal for users booking on behalf of other users. This use case was not possible with the existing product flow.
I was tasked to come up with an effective mvp solution.
What I did
UX/UI design, Research and working with Engineering to decide prioritization based on viability and feasibility.
Project Team: Me + Marketing/Partnerships + Engineering
Timeline: ~4 weeks
Designed an end-to-end shopping and payment experience packaged in a B2B portal designed for MVP to quickly solve for partnership’s needs and to accommodate a newly defined user’s experience.
The Problem
When preferred partners and other agent-like users want to book flights for their clients. they have to call into flier relations to achieve this booking.
This leads to users in the system without their knowledge and consent, incomplete profiles, inefficient communication with the fliers, and an inability to track the effectiveness of campaigns and partnerships.
This is unacceptable because it is inefficient, complicated and hard to track. It is a suboptimal user experience for both the Client (Flier) and the Partner (Booking Agent).
I aimed to design a solution so the Agent User is able to manage and book their clients on their own, billing is simplified, and the flier is ultimately able to have the best experience of our service and the service provided by our Agent users.
How might we allow a user to book a flight for someone else, in a system where many details and communications need to be relayed and permissions granted?
The Process
After initial meeting I had to establish and answer a list of initial inquiries.
There were two main use cases to consider:
Agents booking for habitual fliers Executive assistants with multiple high end clients, jet brokers, travel agencies, corporate travel accounts, concierge at a residential building and European hotels.
Agents booking for one time fliers
Concierge at hotels, credit card concierge, social members clubs, airline concierge ( loyalty programs),and European Hotels.
For V1, I worked on designing for more difficult use case, the hotel concierge for one time fliers. BLADE had a partnership with the Equinox hotel, next door to the office, so I used their team as a case study for the product.
I conducted interviews, user testing a prototype and made numerous changes to the existing flow based on the insights gained from the discovery/testing.
Service journey map - Concierge booking an airport flight
User flow- new experience based on user testingChallenges and Constraints
The services offered by BLADE were a challenging thing to design for, as there were lots of moving parts and conditions needed for flying. Including:
- coordinating pick ups/ exchanges
-baggage/weight limitations
-commercial flight variables
-weather/Temporary Flight Restrictions
In addition, possibly having no direct line to the flier (eg: an executive assistant talking to an agent speaking to concierge)
There are many things a concierge would need to know before booking and so understanding how they currently worked around it helped me solve for what they needed.
The Designs
The major changes I implemented for this portal were changes to the booking flow itself and also to the way we categorized these bookings.
For the flow I moved all major inputs onto the first page, and to display all possible options, so the agent (who is trained in knowing what is the best timing for their guest) is empowered to make a choice on booking, faster. This was based on the pain point that the step-by-step flow was arduous and the users had created a mini system where they ask all the questions in advance.
Another addition to the flow, included placing information into the flow about the helicopter types, jet types, and options for chartering, to empower the inexperienced agent user to book the best experience for their client.
I also helped partnerships establish set pricing for packages, as too many options were over complicating the booking process for the agent. This plus pre-selecting the optimal service but allowing the user to remove any extra items (refundable fare class, meet and greets, extra luggage etc) helped the agent user effectively book for their client, saving time and hassle.
complete flow
With new design system implemented
