Southwest Airlines: Patterns & Flows
Information Architecture
Southwest’s ontology is familiar to users who have previously booked travel online. Elements of travel are well understood by users. The taxonomy helps Southwest plays into its primary goal, which is for users to book flights. But users can also identify other booking categories: hotel, car, and vacation packages. Users can easily search for destinations. A user is not forced to remember an airport code, as they can type in the city then relevant airport results are populated. A good ontology helps users to easily map out the use of date and location elements in the context of booking categories. Because of this ontology, Southwest is able to recommend hotel and car options after a flight is booked. A problem in travel planning is filtering through irrelevant listings. To prevent an exacerbation of stress in travel planning, the IA on Southwest makes the booking easy for users.
A weakness in Southwest’s IA is the way in which users navigate to different areas once their travel has been booked. For example, flight check-ins, flight status, and profile. Even once a user is signed in, there is not a quick link in the top navigation for users to reach the aforementioned areas. Instead, they must navigate to the My Account page. This can be especially frustrating for users who may need to quickly check their flight status.
Flows
Users can input the destination locations in the text input field. As mentioned, suggested airports will populate the results. Users can then use the date picker for departure and return. The Low Fare Calendar feature can be located below the destination and date fields. This way they can potentially select dates based on flight prices.
If users chose to search based on specific dates, they are then taken to the results page with available flights and prices. From here users can even navigate to a different depart and return date within five days of the currently selected date. The flights are listed in chronological order, with tags to identify “Low fare”, “Fastest”, and “Nonstop” flights. Users can also see each flight’s price. These prices are in 3 different tiers. Once users select the flights, they can begin the checkout process.
Checkout is a 3-step process that includes reviewing the Trip & Price Details, Payment, and Confirmation. This process reveals a weakness in Southwest’s ontology. The progress indicator shows the following steps: Price, Payment, and Confirmation. Once on each step’s page, the header title is expanded (i.e. Payment is expanded into Passenger & Payment Info). This is a minor detail and has little impact on my decision to complete the purchase. Once the information is completely filled out, users can review it and complete the purchase. The final page in the checkout process is the booking confirmation.
Design Patterns
- Global and local search patterns: Southwest has a search icon in the top navigation, but its presence is not global. The flight results page does not have this search option, breaks the navigation consistency. A local search example used is the destination field. Both of these search patterns have real-time autocomplete to help users reach their goal.
- Horizontal navigation bar with mega-menu: users can navigate to different booking categories, special offers, and Rapid Rewards information at the top of the page.
- Sort & Filters: flight results let users sort by departure/arrival time, price, duration, and stops. Filters are limited to nonstop/multi-stop, availability, and flight time ranges. There is no price filter, even though users can sort by price. Adding a filter for total price or even narrowing down the price tiers would help provide more user freedom.
- Progress tracker: used in the checkout process. There is a green check icon for completed steps, an airplane icon enclosed in a dark navy circle for the current step, and a light gray circle for uncompleted steps.
- Error messages: Southwest does a good job of error handling. There is an error message underneath the field that needs to be completed. The message specifically informs the user how to recover from an error.
