Next generation storefront (NGS)

In short, NGS allows flyers to easily identify flight and fare attributes. Traditional online booking tools (OBTs) serve fares (for simplicity, I’ll use “fare” and “product” interchangeably) one at a time, with each fares’ attributes hidden behind clicks, or on pages completely separated from the shopping page. This caused travelers to search multiple identical fares within airline schedules, or across airlines, because the fare attributes were hidden. The time spent searching and cross-referencing products takes travelers hours per flight search before selecting a flight.

NGS however, displayed six products per flight (or schedule), and presented each fare’s attributes with one click, making product comparisons extremely simplistic and transparent.

Making decisions

Carriers often have product naming schemes that don’t directly relate to the product attributes. Some carrier use “Flexible” or “Flex” in the product name, but some are arbitrary, like SW’s “Early Bird” product. After time, you may learn their pattern, but maybe not if you don’t fly with them often. The NGS displays all 16 categories together to easier understand product attributes. Also included are the product images, videos, and other media supplied by the carriers (UPAs).

Cross-carrier comparisons

For aggregated results from the GDSs, cross-carrier and product comparisons can be difficult. To account for this, we allow the traveler to select multiple schedules and display them on a single page. From the Comparisons Page, the traveler can also select between products for more transparency between carriers and their products.

Review selection

After selecting. your outbound and return flights, the traveler can review the selections on the Review page. At the time of this proof of concept, connecting the shopping experience to “dot coms,” or connections to carrier websites was out of scope.

Team

This team was almost a 3-in-the-box model, however we had myself for research and UX, a business analyst for research and PM/requirements gathering, a PM for carrier requirements gathering and general direction, and our fearless Retail Director lending decades of GDS knowledge and direction. All the design work was crafted by me, minus some UI elements cannibalized from a previous project.

Research

Having a functionally clickable prototype went a long way to start conversations with carriers about industry standards for this new shopping model. And so being a proof of concept, research was minimal. The scope was mostly limited to attribute display and product comparison using the NGS display.

However, I did get the chance to take many (printed on paper) screenshots (variations of the NGS display/concept) to the local mall. I asked ~20 mall patrons about their leisure air shopping habits and experiences and then discussed the printouts with them. This gave some me great insights into how families, singles, couples, and various age demographics required specific data at specific times in the shopping flow. The quick study also allowed me to build the carrier requirements in a way that matched traveler expectations.

Thanks for looking, and AMA about this project! (See Multi-fare Display to see how this project has evolved)