Lufthansa Innovation Hub
Swifty
AI business travel assistant
My role
UX Research
Timeline
April-May 2023
(2 months)
Results
Proved product's desirability to start building the MVP.
What if… business travelers could book their trips with an AI assistant?
Swifty is an innovative AI business travel assistant developed within the Lufthansa Innovation Hub. As a UX designer and researcher for Swifty, my role involved understanding the needs of our potential users to help shape the product.
For this project, I had the pleasure of working with 2 venture developers and a strategic designer to validate the desirability, viability, and feasibility of the product. As strategic designers, we mostly focused on the desirability aspect.
*Note: for more information about the research process, please email me.
In order to understand where to drive the product, we set out a couple of goals:
Validate Assumptions: we sought to confirm our hypotheses regarding user dissatisfaction with existing products and their interest in a solution offering recommendations and automatic booking.
Identify Pain Points: by understanding the challenges faced by travel managers and business travelers, we aimed to create a user-centric product that effectively addresses their needs and frustrations.
Evaluate Past Experience: exploring user interactions with chatbots in previous travel experiences allowed us to leverage existing knowledge and insights to inform the development of Swifty.
The process
We wanted to understand the current pain points, gain points, and needs of the following customer groups, given that each one of these groups makes up a part of the business travel ecosystem.
11 interviews
with travel managers.
8 interviews
with business travelers.
3 interviews
with travel agencies.
Sampling methodologies
To recruit our participants we applied the following sampling methods:
Purposive Sampling: by intentionally selecting participants based on specific criteria relevant to our research objectives, such as frequent business travelers and travel managers, we ensured that our findings were directly applicable to our target audience.
Snowball Sampling: leveraging existing networks (e.g., LinkedIn, interviewees recruitment platforms, etc…) enabled us to expand our participant pool and gather diverse perspectives, enriching the depth and breadth of our research insights.
Convenience Sampling: recruiting individuals readily available and accessible through various channels helped us ensure a sufficient sample size within the constraints of time and resources, allowing for comprehensive data collection.
Learnings
What did we find out about our target users?
Common practices and motivations:
Pain points
Fragmented experience:
Interviewees mentioned that they tend to switch between various B2C websites for searching and booking.
Many errors occur during the process due to manual data input.
Travel data spread over multiple sources and can be cumbersome to keep track.
Invoicing and expensing:
Invoices are scattered across multiple sources.
Difficulty in keeping track of all invoices.
The reimbursement processes is quite lengthy.
Losing time trying to find the best deals:
Fitting choice into travel budget.
Filtering for personal preferences (e.g., collects member reward points, near clients, etc…)
Slow process & dealing with uncertainty:
Unclear travel guidelines for budget.
Lack of flexibility of tickets and luggage when plans change.
Uncertain about steps to solve support problems.
Coordinate meeting with personal, professional, and client schedule.
What do our users need?
How did these insights help us shape the product?
Need to have:
Multiple options.
Selecting the best option within budget and convenience.
Nice to have:
Having a simple and efficient interface.
Having an overview of travel information.
Keeping track of invoices.
Refinement of Target Group:
Primary: should be frequent business travelers who currently use B2C booking tools, and our main focus will be self-employed professionals, small startups, and agencies.
Secondary: traditional travel agencies that still operate very manually would benefit from Swifty and could serve as a distribution channel for us to small companies.
Solution
Seamless booking
With Swifty, you can integrate multiple tools and have an all-in-one booking experience without the need to search across various pages.
Personalized Recommendations
Providing Based on the user profile and preferences, your AI assistant provides tailored suggestions to fulfill your travel needs.
Streamlined Expense Management
Swifty simplifies the invoice management and expensing processes by providing the user with customer-ready invoices and receipts that contain the company name, address, and VAT ID.
Conclusion
After extensive research and user validation, we were happy to find that Swifty was approved by our main stakeholders to start building the MVP.
Swifty has ever since been continuing to grow offering a seamless, personalized booking solution.
Reflection
Flexibility is key.
Our ability to remain adaptable and flexible in our approach empowered us to pivot and realign Swifty to better serve both user needs and business objectives, ultimately ensuring its success.
I wholeheartedly believe that the team's willingness to embrace change played a pivotal role in shaping Swifty into a product that offers a truly seamless experience for business travelers.
Collaborating with such a dedicated and passionate team has been an incredible privilege, and I am deeply grateful for their unwavering commitment.
Together, we've not only met but exceeded our goals, making Swifty an unforgettable journey for both our users and ourselves.
