Designing flight booking: reducing complexity in decision-heavy journeys

Flight booking looks simple on the surface.

Search.
Compare.
Select.
Pay.

But once you start analyzing it, it becomes clear that this is not a transactional flow.

It’s a decision system.

The challenge

The goal of this challenge was to redesign part of a flight booking experience for a fictional airline.

At first glance, the task seemed straightforward:
improve the process of finding and purchasing a flight.

But very quickly, the focus shifted.

This wasn’t just about designing screens.
It was about understanding how people make decisions under constraints.

And more importantly, how small frictions accumulate into cognitive overload.

Understanding two different intents

To frame the problem, I worked with two distinct user scenarios:

Federica — a student planning her first solo trip across Europe

• Limited budget

• High flexibility

• Strong focus on finding the best deal

Cristóbal — planning a romantic getaway

• Time-constrained

• Looking for something specific

• More sensitive to convenience than absolute price

Both users are booking flights.

But they are not solving the same problem.

And designing a single flow for both means navigating that tension.

Mapping the journey

The journey was structured across key phases:

• Inspiration

• Search

• Exploration

• Evaluation

• Purchase

• Post-purchase

At each stage, I mapped:

• Actions

• Emotional states

• Frictions

• Touchpoints

• Opportunities

What emerged was not a usability issue in the traditional sense.

It was something deeper.

The real problem: cognitive overload

The biggest friction wasn’t visual.
It wasn’t even functional.

It was cognitive.

Users are forced to make too many micro-decisions in sequence:

• Comparing prices vs. schedules

• Understanding what’s included and what’s not

• Evaluating trade-offs without clear context

• Anticipating hidden costs

While mapping the journey, one thing became clear:

The moments of highest friction were not where the interface was broken —
but where the user had to think the most.

This creates a subtle but powerful effect:

Decision fatigue.

And when that happens, users either:

• choose quickly without confidence

• or abandon the process entirely

Key frictions identified

Across both journeys, several recurring issues appeared:

• Lack of price transparency early in the process

• Difficulty comparing options in a meaningful way

• Hidden or late-disclosed costs

• Overloaded result screens

• Uncertainty around conditions (changes, cancellations)

These are not isolated problems.

They compound.

Designing by reducing, not adding

Instead of adding features, the approach focused on reducing friction.

Three main directions guided the solution:

1. Make price understandable from the start

Users shouldn’t have to “discover” the real price.

• Clear total cost from the first interaction

• Reduced ambiguity around fees

• Less mental calculation

2. Support comparison, not just exploration

Most interfaces show options.

Few help users compare them effectively.

• Structured comparison logic

• Highlighting meaningful differences

• Reducing the effort required to evaluate alternatives

3. Reduce decision load across the flow

Instead of concentrating complexity at key moments:

• Distribute decisions progressively

• Remove unnecessary steps

• Simplify interactions without oversimplifying the experience

From complexity to structure

The key shift in this project was not visual.

It was structural.

Fewer decisions per step

• Clearer information hierarchy

• Better alignment between user intent and available options

The interface became simpler —
but only because the system behind it was clearer.

What this project revealed

This challenge reinforced something important:

Designing flows like this is not about optimizing screens.

It’s about managing complexity.

Especially in systems where:

• users don’t have full information

• decisions have trade-offs

• and uncertainty is part of the experience

Final thought

Flight booking is not just a usability problem.

It’s a decision-making problem.

And the role of design is not only to make things usable —
but to make decisions easier to take.

GO TO FIGJAM