Explore: The Flexible Search Engine: Designing a more sophisticated way of searching

The airline industry is a complex industry. It has geographically spread employees, safety threats, partnerships with regional firms and other airlines, changing government regulations, sustainability, and flight shaming (Deloitte, 2016). Next to these complexities, the airline industry is very competitive and commoditized. The commoditization results in customers often making price-driven choices and the high competition makes it hard for airlines to differentiate. This graduation project focussed on how customers make choices during the travel journey. This process starts from the moment customers decide they want to travel up until the moment just before they purchase the airline tickets. This project will focus on how to influence the way customers make choices by designing to improve their overall experience. The final design is a new type of flexible search engine, which fits the needs of the customers of today, creating a better online experience and triggering customers to make experience-driven choices. Customers are flexible and that is why they are looking for a more flexible way of searching. With the Explore search engine they will be able to search in a flexible way. With the final design customers will be stimulated to choose the airline and its vacation experiences and offers, by stimulating affective forecasting.
Strategic Product Design