20 min reading
From clunky airline apps to a seamless booking experience
Ludmilla Ramos
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Product Design
ToucanFly
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2024
“So really nice work. I think you've got a solid understanding of the core user flow and the process was quite easy to follow and it was pretty intuitive. It guided me nicely along the way. So really great work.”
UX Design Institute Student Success Team
Project Review
Project Overview
Competitor airline apps were slow, cluttered, and hid key booking details, frustrating users and wasting time. ToucanFly’s redesign streamlined the journey, making it up to 4× faster than Gol Airlines and 40× faster than Latam to book flights from the home screen, while improving clarity, accessibility, and user confidence — increasing potential for conversion.
Impact
→ Up to 40× faster bookings than competitors
Streamlined flows and prioritised booking actions drastically reduced time-to-book.
→ Up to 60% reduction in booking journey steps
Optimising user flows and reducing data entry built trust, speeding up time-to-purchase.
→ Accessible for international travellers
Multi-language and multi-currency options ensured a smoother experience for a diverse, international audience.
Problem-Solving
The urge to recreate the booking process
This was my chance to design a product end-to-end from scratch, right from the early stages of the product lifecycle. Before even thinking about features, I ran a survey to understand the market, the product and how people really felt about booking flights online, especially through airline apps.
"Long waits and frequent page refreshes (very short downtime on these sites). Terrible. The amount of personal data requested for booking is immense. A login is mandatory, which always fails. An intermediate attempt was made on Skyscanner, which was unsuccessful. The site was extremely cluttered, and the display of proposed flights was bizarre, completely unacceptable."
Survey Participant
The verdict?
Slow, messy flows, unintuitive search, and too much data entry. It all boiled down to three core issues:
Fragmented booking journeys → long waits and broken flows
Cluttered, inefficient screens → key actions hidden in noise
Limited transparency and control → forced logins, too much personal data
Goals
Strategic vision: Booking made effortless
From the beginning, the vision was clear: ToucanFly would set a new benchmark for airline app usability by making the booking process faster, more transparent, and giving more users control. The research insights were too strong to ignore — if the goal was to stand out in a competitive travel market, I had to design for desirability, not just viability.
So, my objective became to make this process more efficient for business by making it easier and delightful for users to book a flight through the app and increasing flight booking conversion.
Challenges & Constraints
Navigating the hurdles of a complex redesign
Designing ToucanFly came with its fair share of setbacks:
Hypothetical setup: No real client or budget; this was part of my Professional Diploma in UX Design.
Limited research pool: Insights came from a small survey group and usability tests, so the data wasn’t fully representative.
Big scope, solo delivery: Tackled multiple problems at once to create a minimum desirable product, which meant more complexity for one person to manage.
Heavy high-fidelity prototype: Complex conditional variables in Figma prototyping slowed the process and extended timelines.
Prioritising UX over UI: Skipped branding colours and colour-contrast checks to deliver faster, as the focus was on UX and interaction, not on UI.
The Process
Spotting the cracks in the booking journey
I kicked things off with a survey where 76.9% of respondents had used an airline or flight search app in the last six months, and 80% of them went there to check prices. But only 60% actually booked a flight through them.
But, why is there a 20% difference between those who just check and actually buy online?
To be able to have a deep and broad understanding about the market landscape, I want to see how the competitors, like Gol, Iberia, Airlingus and Eurowings, were performing in their apps.
Competitive usability tests and heuristic evaluation with the competitors told the rest of the story: price came first, but screens were cluttered, flows were slow, and too much data entry killed the momentum.
One tester summed it up perfectly:
"That kind of error that you have to come back after so much, really can ruin your experience".
Usability Test Participant
From these insights, I identified 11 key issues affecting conversion, trust, and overall experience spread across multiple touch points in the user journey.
To tackle them, I mapped goals, behaviours, emotions, and friction points, using an affinity mapping and a user journey map to guide priorities over the process.
Shaping the first flight path
With the research mapped out, I sketched ToucanFly’s first journey, a flow diagram covering everything from the home screen to purchase confirmation, solving each key issue along the way.
The goal?
Make booking fast, transparent, and effortless, with flexible access, smart calendars, clear pricing, and minimal friction.
From there, I put pen to paper, drafting wireframes that pulled the best ideas from competitor analysis, journey mapping, and user flows. At this stage, my thinking revolved around a few key questions:
Which components will best deliver the intended experience on each screen?
What choices should be prioritised in each frame to reduce cognitive overload?
How can I make the flow as accessible as possible for international travellers?
How can I ensure the process feels clear, transparent, and straightforward from start to finish?
Designing the seamless end-to-end experience
As Toucanfly was a brand new product, I took inspiration from iOS, Material Design, and Orbit UI Kits, but every component was either heavily tweaked or rebuilt entirely in Figma to fit the product’s vision.
It all came together in three main pillars:
Accessible and purposeful components that would be intuitive for a global audience.
Consistent, scalable asset library with +270 assets organised with variables, styles, and components that kept hierarchy intact and made future scaling effortless.
High-fidelity wireframes that work, including 71 wireframes crafted with atomic design thinking, ensuring everything behaved exactly as intended in prototyping.
Some moments were exciting (designing that aeroplane was a highlight) and others… well, less glamorous (naming component variables at 11 pm isn’t for the faint of heart). But the result was a backbone ready for growth — clear, consistent, and accessible.
If you’re curious about the UI Solutions that came out of this process, you can explore the full case study here.
Prototyping to win hearts (and approvals)
In the early stages of product development, especially with multiple stakeholders, I see high-fidelity prototypes as more than design deliverables — they’re persuasion tools. They help secure buy-in and show the real potential of an idea. Also, it is a great tool for improving cross-functional communication during implementation.
While this level of detail can be time-consuming and often outside budget, I went all in. Using variables and conditionals in Figma, I recreated realistic interactions to make ToucanFly feel as close to the final product as possible
Want to take ToucanFly for a spin?
I’ve built a fully interactive Figma prototype — complete with task instructions — so you can experience the booking flow yourself.
This was a year-long, high-effort project created for learning purposes, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Your feedback would be incredibly valuable, and it would mean a lot if you share it with me on LinkedIn.
A never-launched idea, but huge learning outcomes
ToucanFly was my opportunity to design a minimum desirable product (MDP) that balanced user needs with a strong business perspective. I intentionally used the home screen to guide attention, created an intuitive flow that let users skip unnecessary steps, and incorporated purposeful engagement points — all without disrupting the rhythm or enjoyment of the booking experience.
Solution #01: Optimising the Home Screen
4× faster than Gol – Gol Airlines leaves 52% of its home screen empty. ToucanFly uses 43.8% of its home screen for three booking entry points: Search Bar (9.1%), Best Deals Carousel (33%), and Menu Option (1.5%), increasing potential for conversion.
Solution #02: Optimising the User Flow
40× faster than Latam – Latam’s booking journey is long and rigid. ToucanFly’s Search Bar lets users skip one step, while the Best Deals Carousel cuts up to 60% of the booking process, cutting off unnecessary data at this stage — significantly reducing time-to-purchase and encouraging users to make a quicker decision.
Solution #03: Foreigners' friendly
ToucanFly implemented two key fixes: a simple and intuitive way to switch languages using global icons, and flexible currency options upfront. This reduced late-journey frustration in the booking flow, making the experience more accessible for international users.
Final takeaways
This project reinforced how purposeful UX design can directly influence business performance. By addressing pain points at multiple touchpoints:
The booking journey became faster and more transparent, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Clearer pricing and flexible flows helped build user trust, improving retention potential.
Prioritising high-impact features on the home screen created multiple pathways to purchase, optimising engagement and reducing drop-offs.
ToucanFly shows that when design decisions are grounded in research and strategically aligned with business goals, the result is more than a functional product, it’s an experience that can drive measurable growth.
