CLIENT
Amadeus
ROLE
Lead Product Design
YEAR
2018
E-Power is Amadeus' lead B2B and B2C product for online travel agencies and
consolidators.
Amadeus Ticket Changer (ATC) was the new product that was being built for
airlines to give their customers post-booking capabilities such as ticket change or
adding ancillary services.
When I started working for Amadeus in 2017, the company was going through a
transformational period. The E-Power product and engineering team had recently
worked with a design agency to kick things off to design a new E-Power, but it
was far from being finished.
On the other hand, the team had also recently signed off the contract for building
ATC for Amadeus Global and was hoping to hit two birds with one stone by
building a single product framework.
My role
I wore different hats throughout the process of building these products.
- Project Lead
I was working with three different teams (and their respective product managers) on various parts of the journey, bridging
the gap between them, VP of Product and VP of Engineering by creating a collaborative environment, finding ways to
encourage user-driven thinking, and helping engineering with scoping and sequencing.
- Lead Product Designer
I had the chance of introducing a new way of working for the teams by creating user journeys, defining IA, establishing
visual design, the design system, and finally creating prototypes to validate with our clients. I've also managed to continue running design sprints for the product and engineering teams - which helped us capture key problems and assumptions.
The Challenge(s)
For ATC, it was quite different. Now it had a quite bright
future, but it also had to bear in mind the kind of flexibility
of her brother had. It was also quite important for
Amadeus's plans for the next decade with the
implementing of NDC.
E-Power was a product that started being built in the late
2000s and considered to be a "legacy" product.
Throughout the years, it was Frankensteinized by adding
every customer request or flexibility that every country
market required while not applying any customer-centric
design approach.
Goals
Making sure new E-Power is designed
the right way with the help of key
customers across the market.
Setting and executing the vision that is
required for ATC: a white label product
that has all the capabilities and the
flexibility for the market.
Both products having the right sets of
features and customisation options for
all packages.
The Research
We had to make sure what pain-points our customers had with E-Power as no central
feedback system was created for the product previously. Since everything that was added
to the product was either one-off customer requests or some over-engineered features, we
wanted to set our key objectives for the research.
1- Understand the E-Power customer journey from pre-sales to adoption for travel agents.
2- Understanding the solutions E-power is presenting from pre-booking to post-trip.
3- Identify unmet end-user needs and provide opportunities for clients
4- Invalidating ideas by presenting design prototypes.
For these initial objectives, we had the chance of working with a user research company
named System Concepts. While these objectives evolved throughout the process, some of
them stayed relevant at all times to build the feedback loop, especially objectives 3 and 4.
The Approach
Having the same engineering and product resources on both products meant that ideally, we could build a shared design library and iterate
accordingly.
The key thing for us was to keep it simple and avoid the design library turning into a "design system" in the minds of managers or engineering.
As soon as we agreed on initial design concepts for both products, I've started to break these pages down into components and iterated on
them. While both products were aiming the travel industry as a whole, E-Power was quite detailed and complex in terms of customer journeys
- as much as any other metasearch products like Skyscanner or Mondo.
Problem to Opportunity Round I
E-POWER
Problem: It was really hard to maintain the old product
- engineering, or design-wise.
Opportunity: We needed to make the jump, and start with
something simple, instead of planning with big design
upfront.
ATC
Problem: There was no white-label product like ATC built
for Amadeus before.
Opportunity: Neither for any other company! We had an
exciting opportunity to build something new, and we could
potentially use any design/engineering resource.
The new product had the idea of "time-saving moments" when it came to amending a
booked flight.
Problem to Opportunity Round II
E-POWER
Problem: Personas. Why it'd have to be personas?
No, but seriously, if you are designing for such a massive project, where do you ever stop?
ATC
Problem: How do you build a white-label ticket changer
product for dozens of airlines without thinking about the
consequences of their customer experience or branding?
Opportunity: Templates to get them started. And if they would like to add/remove a feature that's perfectly fine too, as everything in ATC was always designed and built to be modular. Need to show destinations on your landing screen?
Sure.
Would you like an upsell module with that?
Problem to Opportunity Round III
E-POWER
Problem: Because it was sold in over 100+ countries, the
product was filled with hacks for a certain language or a
mandate. This also slowed down any progress previously as there were always consequences to any design change.
Opportunity: Focus on the overlapping themes, design for the majority of markets and think of it like an "E-Power Lite".
ATC
Problem: Every airline had different ancillary services and
even more rules and restrictions about changing a booking.
Opportunity: Going through the data in Amadeus led us to promote the right features. In this case, the best performing services were the focus.
Measuring Success
What made this project a great success was continuous
communication with key customers. They helped us shape
our product roadmap greatly.
Many clients have repeatedly said how these products will
help them achieve their business goals - especially with the
help of personalized offers on ancillary sales.
It also helped the company secure many contract renewals
and RFPs happening towards the end of Q3 & Q4.
"I can't wait for our
team to use this!"
- ECOM of a leading OTA based in UK
...and learnings
You see, we weren't focusing on making these products unlike anything has ever
seen. That's rarely the goal in big companies. On the contrary, we wanted
everyone to have a familiar experience, so it would not feel like a white label
product for the end customer, for people like you and me.
While this sounds easy, but it wasn't. It's not like any other redesign of any
booking site where people design for a single traveler with 1 bag with one of three
payment options. We had over 30 payment methods, and not all card numbers
starting with a specific number was supposed to belong to a card type. Or
changing your itinerary post-departure, when you're not the master passenger.
When I left, the company was still working on their go-to-market with both
products. I also knew that it was just the beginning, especially with NDC coming
in the next year.
However, this product and the journey we've been through helped me understand
some of the challenges of complex apps, and what some other products would
call edge or narrow cases could be integral to designing a complex white-label
B2B2C product. In fact, for the first time in my career, I was the one who didn't
come up or worried about edge cases!