Home

Curated Travel Discovery

A SaaS web app that matches travelers with spontaneous trips with budget-friendly prices.

Launched

SaaS Web App

OVERVIEW

Sponteous is an early-stage startup that helps airlines clear distressed inventory by selling it as mystery flights to end users.

In October 2020, I joined a four-person team as the UX designer, working closely with the CEO to design a solution that would improve the website experience and help expand into the Canadian end-user market.

MY ROLE

UX/UI Design

TEAM

Overview

TIMEFRAME

Dec 2021 ~ Apr 2023

Design Highlight

A refined user journey and a streamlined, decision-supportive interaction flow.

Discover trips with built-in flexibility.

A streamlined calendar supports flexible planning, while 3-day flight bundles reduce effort and align user choices with inventory needs, leading to clearer user decisions and higher conversion.

Unlock clarity through focused views.

Key details expand in a modal, offering clearer focus and reducing clutter. A price trend chart follows naturally, inviting exploration and guiding users toward confident, informed decisions.

Visual anchors lead to billing clarity.

Key details expand in a modal, offering clearer focus and reducing clutter. A price trend chart follows naturally, inviting exploration and guiding users toward confident, informed decisions.

Project Context

The project was initiated to support a new funding round.

Discover trips with built-in flexibility.

A streamlined calendar supports flexible planning, while 3-day flight bundles reduce effort and align user choices with inventory needs, leading to clearer user decisions and higher conversion.

The goal for this project is to…

Improving user retention rate to strengthen behavioral data and demonstrate product traction.

Drive stronger sales by improving satisfaction across the user journey.

Deep Research

Performed research from existing data.

New users drop-off rate is higher than 42.9%

According to guest browsing data, user numbers gradually decreased between the onboarding page and the checkout page. Only half of users completed the full purchasing process.

User retention rate is around 65%.

Feedback from registered users revealed that many found the website difficult to use and frequently encountered system errors. Some even expressed unwillingness to return to the platform.

Solution

HMW create a more engaging and efficient travel flow within existing business limitations.

Design a user journey that maintains a positive experience across all stages.

Prioritized features based on available resources and constraints.

Given limited design time and engineering constraints, we prioritized the checkout summary, as it was both feasible and highly requested by users and the Sponteous team. While improving onboarding and booking flow could enhance efficiency, these required major structural changes and were set as long-term goals.

The process of improving booking experiences.

Redundant booking steps.

Usability testing revealed that 8 out of 10 users had to re-enter travel time repeatedly for multiple destinations, and any errors forced them to restart the process.

Redesign the user flow

Business constraints behind the previous design.

As an early-stage startup with limited airline partnerships, Sponteous relies on destination variety to support its random trip model. To avoid exposing inventory gaps, the user flow places destination selection before travel time. Reversing this order could limit visible options and reduce user engagement.

Design Choices

Split travel time duration into two ways.

Team vote for design options.

Small iteration base on feedbacks.

Multiple choice inputs reduce constraints and support more exploratory user behavior.

Provide improved wording to eliminate ambiguity.

Improving card area to support more.

The process of improving booking experiences.

Checkout credibility issue.

Over 70% of users expressed dissatisfaction with the bill summary, citing confusion over the display of three different prices and uncertainty about which one is final. This lack of clarity negatively impacts the website's credibility.

Design Choices

Detailed the options using identifiable cards and incorporated micro-interactions to help users understand the full bill.

Ideation process

Final outcome

This project successfully contributed to securing the second funding round in 2022.

Before

Redundant user flow confused users.

Unexpected notification interrupt users' decision.

Confused bill information.

After

Clear user flow to guide users' decision.

Notifications appear only when necessary to support user focus.

Matrix of Success

After the final design review, I collaborated with our design team and quickly shipped the new prototype and followed up with a round of usability testing with 15+ new users.

Before

After