Date: February 2017 - November 2018
Client: Voya GmbH
Role: Product Designer
Date: February 2017 - November 2018
Client: Voya GmbH
Role: Product Designer
Voya is a personal assistance service for business travel, but during the growth phase, we found out, that not everyone is really into chat. So we needed to find a solution to allow users a self-service without converting the platform to an online-booking-engine.
Thanks to our business intelligence team we found out that 30% of our active travelers are not booking themselves because they didn't want to chat. To not have to talk with us, they merely asked their travel managers to request options for them. Additionally, I did interviews with our travel agents and found out that we also have a group of clients which are strictly avoiding a real conversation and still request themselves. For this, they write sentences like:
Flight, tomorrow, HAM-MUC, departure morning, return evening.
Considering, the most valuable points from the user interviews and our data sheets we ended up with these points to solve.
most valuable USP, the personal service, and conversational commerce experience. To build on existing user experience, I decided to trigger the search masks with the "Plus button" next to the text input, as it is on iMessage, WhatsApp, and other messaging apps.
Instead of designing another flight search mask, I wanted to create an experience which leads the user towards his goal without bombing him with questions. My selection of colors was intended to be the opposite as the rest of the app, in order to underline visually, that the user is now in a separate section of the app.
So I decided to request all needed information about the journey piece by piece.
When I redesigned the Voya iOS app, one of my primary goals was to have a consistent experience through the entire app. Even tho we were about to add a feature with a different approach than our USP I wanted the transition as seamless as possible.
One of the main crossing points between OBE and Conversational Assistance is transmitting the request. Since we've found out that users write incomplete sentences, I had the idea to transfer the JSON payload from the filled mask with a chat message. Whenever a user sends a request through express, the system sends the payload with a sweet message as the user.
One of Voya's most remarkable features is that you'd received the best fitting options tailored for you. Since this is not what an OBE is, I just added as the last option to the widgets a see all options widget which leads the user to an exploration process. Here you can configure your journey and filter out unwanted once through a self-exploration experience.