Trains

Designing a train travel search experience through the lens of UX airline practices.

TIMELINE

1 Month

PEOPLE

Solo Project

WEBSITE CONCEPT

UX Design Case Study

OPPORTUNITY

Why is the search experience for comparing train ticket options so different from airlines?

With the popularity of train travel across the globe, a traveler would assume that comparing different train options would be as easy as comparing flights. However, when a traveler looks for a website to compare different routes, departure times, or costs, there are limited options. Depending on the geographic location of train travel, the only option could be the train operator's website, similar to a specific airline. The problems, from a tourist perspective, include foreign language-only websites, not knowing the train company’s name, or knowing where certain start and end destinations are geographically. Compared to aggregate flight search engines, there are limited options for this type of search within train travel.

DESIGN FEEDBACK + ITERATION

  1. Changed the brand styling to meet accessibility standards.

  1. Improved spacing/padding, fixed components, added a checkout example.

  1. Experimented with different component types.

CONSTRAINTS

What restrictions impacted the design process?

  1. Time. Only 4 weeks of work included: learning a new design software, researching passenger rail, building the initial design, getting feedback, iterating on designs, and prototyping the final version.

  1. Research. An idea may not translate into a needed website design. Comparing different apps/websites from airlines, hotels, passenger rail, travel aggregate sites, and theme park sites showcased a variety of designs across languages. As rail travel continues to grow, depending on the location in the world, the need for comparing different railway operators is growing.

  1. Learning New Software. Before building this web design, I had years of experience with competitors' design software. Before my professional work transitioned to Figma, I took the initiative to learn this design program to teach my colleagues how to use it. The best way was to build a small design library through this project before training with colleagues. However, learning the software did take time away from designing.

  1. Design System(s). To build the design faster and give myself the ability to research longer, I could have used one of the many pre-built design systems. However, beyond my need to learn how to build a design system, many companies have their own internal systems. A designer must be able to create and edit with a brand's pre-built system.

FINAL DESIGN

KEY TAKEAWAYS

What areas of growth happened?

  1. I learned an entire new design program while building a component library. Researching train travel limited the number of prototype-ready designs I could complete in the timeframe. Therefore, I focused solely on the search results page and components needed which resulted in a fully prototyped final design.

  1. Constraints may help designers produce a more impactful design. The user expectations for the design and function of travel sites created a constraint for my work. The final prototype was an easily comparable table of travel options for users to browse.