Amadeus E-Power
Amadeus
2018
Product Design Lead
SUMMARY
Scope
As the the lead product designer, I owned the end-to-end process for the E-Power product from 0 to 1 by creating user journey maps, building prototypes to test with users and establishing the foundations of the design system.
Challenges
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.
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
Impact
Introduced user-centric design to Amadeus, starting a cultural shift in R&D
Built design foundations for E-Power and Amadeus Ticket Changer
Helped secure renewals for customers such Flight Centre UK, and others
THE CONTEXT
Background
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.
Why?
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.
GOALS
#1
Making sure new E-Power is designed the right way with the help of key customers across the market.
#2
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.
#3
Both products having the right sets of features and customisation options for all packages.
RESEARCH
Understanding the pain-points
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 1
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.
PROBLEM TO OPPORTUNITY
ROUND 2
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?
Opportunity: No personas. Not even proto-personas. Not that they don't usually work, but it's very hard to categorize with so many airlines, agencies and itineraries involved. Instead, we focused on giving those capabilities to build what's right for them to our clients, with the idea of a WYSIWYG editor in a different product package.
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?
MEASURING SUCCESS
What made this project a great success was continuous useer-led approach with key customers. They helped us shape our product roadmap greatly.
Key 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.
LEARNINGS
You see, we weren't focusing on making these products "shiny".
That's rarely the goal in Enterprise SaaS. On the contrary, we wanted everyone to have a familiar experience, so it would not feel like a white label product for the end customers 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 for next steps in my career, 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 scales of white label products, and what some other products would call edge or narrow cases could be integral to designing a complex product with incredible flexibility. In fact, for the first time in my career, I was the one who didn't come up or worried about edge cases!