The workshop with an unexpected outcome

The Company

Kiwi.com is a travel tech company that helps travelers book flights worldwide. Known for its innovative Virtual Interlining technology, Kiwi.com combines flights from airlines that don’t normally cooperate, allowing customers to find cheaper and more flexible travel options. By 2024, Kiwi.com was selling an average of over 50,000 seats daily.

Project Overview

''Change trip'' (Voluntary Flight Changes) feature has not been touched in the past +5 years 🦕. In June 2022 within the Regular Usability Testing we found several usability issues 😕. This is a prominent CS contact reason with: 500 messages & 200 calls a day and 60% of customers asking for a flight change price & options do not pay for it in the end.

My role

I was design owner of this discovery and led the workshop where we collaborated with ux researchers, engineers and product manager to deide on the future ideal experience that would align with busines needs.

Research-driven approach to understand

Session replay analysis
Secondary research of customer comments
Unstructured interviews with CS agents

Research questions

Where people look for the option to change their trip?

Why users want to change their booking?
What are the users expectations on price of voluntary change?
How users perceive the results of change trip search?
When users contact CS for help with the trip change? Why?

Time to for the workshop!

Before redesigning this feature, we needed to understand and align on why it was failing and what the redesign should actually aim to fix. So we decided to run a cross-functional discovery workshop with Design, Engineering, Product and Research in the same room.

We started by mapping the existing customer journey - to capture the real experience end-to-end. Next, we layered in existing research insights and usability problems at the relevant touchpoints. Quotes, behavioural patterns and support findings grounded the map in real behaviour rather than assumptions. This clearly exposed where users hesitate, postpone decisions or abandon the process.

From those moments we created How-Might-We statements tied to specific Jobs-To-Be-Done, and voted on the most impactful opportunities to focus the team on a shared direction.

Brainstorming

The second day focused on testing different solutions.

With the key problems and priorities agreed, we moved into structured brainstorming. Everyone sketched ideas individually first to avoid groupthink, then shared and discussed them together.

We compared approaches based on how well they addressed the identified Jobs-To-Be-Done and reduced the moments of uncertainty uncovered in the journey map.

After discussion, we voted again to identify the concepts most likely to solve the core problems while remaining feasible to build.

Prototyping

Finally, we moved from the physical workshop into Figma to quickly test the chosen directions.

Outcome - Rethinking the Feature

The workshop concluded with several hypotheses to validate through prototyping and testing.

Surprisingly, when we evaluated the concepts against business priorities, user needs and technical feasibility, a clearer solution emerged.

Rebuilding the existing voluntary change flow would mean recreating a complex flight search inside the feature - something the main search already handled better and would continue to evolve. Maintaining two parallel systems would add long-term cost and complexity, while research showed many users were only ''window-shopping'' and exploring options rather than actually changing their flight.

Instead of rebuilding the feature, we proposed a different approach: Remove the dedicated change flow and provide users with credits they could use to rebook directly in the main search experience.

The impact:

reduced engineering and maintenance cost
freed product capacity for higher-value improvements
removed a confusing, half-functional experience
guided users to a clearer and more flexible way to rebook

Rather than improving a problematic tool, we found out how to eliminated the need for it - and replaced it with a solution that worked better for both the business and the user.

Team Feedback

Senior UX Researcher
''I'm impressed with how versatile designer Kat is overall and I appreciate that she's able to take any challenge, even switch contexts (chatbot x Helpcenter x Flight changes) and get to the solution that is both business viable and good for users. She has a great sense for detail and I really love how systematic she is when working on a solution which are aspects that indeed contributed to the high-quality outputs of Kat's work.''
Senior Product Manager
Kat's contributions and participation throughout the workshop were truly outstanding, and I wanted to acknowledge her exceptional skills and work on workshop participation and "basic" discussion facilitating. As a participant, Kat has demonstrated an impressive level of engagement and enthusiasm, with active involvement in discussions that helped drive meaningful conversations and fostered a productive atmosphere for everyone involved. Her insights and perspectives were valuable and greatly contributed to the overall success of the workshop. I was particularly impressed with how quickly Kat adapted to feedback and took immediate action for creating basic prototype on the last day of workshop. Kat jumped on improving prototype straight after workshop, and her willingness to iterate and prototype solutions based on the feedback received showcased her commitment and skill to delivering high-quality design. Collaborating with Kat was a pleasure, as she consistently brought a positive attitude and a strong sense of teamwork to the table. Her contribution not only enriched the workshop but also had a positive impact on the final outcome.
Design Lead
Kat's leadership skills have been particularly evident in the product discovery for Voluntary Flight Changes. She has successfully aligned with stakeholders and focused on what truly matters validating the possibility to turn off the feature. Her commitment to facilitate team retrospectives underscores her dedication to continual improvement.
Senior UX Researcher
''I'm impressed with how versatile designer Kat is overall and I appreciate that she's able to take any challenge, even switch contexts (chatbot x Helpcenter x Flight changes) and get to the solution that is both business viable and good for users. She has a great sense for detail and I really love how systematic she is when working on a solution which are aspects that indeed contributed to the high-quality outputs of Kat's work.''
Senior Product Manager
Kat's contributions and participation throughout the workshop were truly outstanding, and I wanted to acknowledge her exceptional skills and work on workshop participation and "basic" discussion facilitating. As a participant, Kat has demonstrated an impressive level of engagement and enthusiasm, with active involvement in discussions that helped drive meaningful conversations and fostered a productive atmosphere for everyone involved. Her insights and perspectives were valuable and greatly contributed to the overall success of the workshop. I was particularly impressed with how quickly Kat adapted to feedback and took immediate action for creating basic prototype on the last day of workshop. Kat jumped on improving prototype straight after workshop, and her willingness to iterate and prototype solutions based on the feedback received showcased her commitment and skill to delivering high-quality design. Collaborating with Kat was a pleasure, as she consistently brought a positive attitude and a strong sense of teamwork to the table. Her contribution not only enriched the workshop but also had a positive impact on the final outcome.
Design Lead
Kat's leadership skills have been particularly evident in the product discovery for Voluntary Flight Changes. She has successfully aligned with stakeholders and focused on what truly matters validating the possibility to turn off the feature. Her commitment to facilitate team retrospectives underscores her dedication to continual improvement.
Senior UX Researcher
''I'm impressed with how versatile designer Kat is overall and I appreciate that she's able to take any challenge, even switch contexts (chatbot x Helpcenter x Flight changes) and get to the solution that is both business viable and good for users. She has a great sense for detail and I really love how systematic she is when working on a solution which are aspects that indeed contributed to the high-quality outputs of Kat's work.''
Senior Product Manager
Kat's contributions and participation throughout the workshop were truly outstanding, and I wanted to acknowledge her exceptional skills and work on workshop participation and "basic" discussion facilitating. As a participant, Kat has demonstrated an impressive level of engagement and enthusiasm, with active involvement in discussions that helped drive meaningful conversations and fostered a productive atmosphere for everyone involved. Her insights and perspectives were valuable and greatly contributed to the overall success of the workshop. I was particularly impressed with how quickly Kat adapted to feedback and took immediate action for creating basic prototype on the last day of workshop. Kat jumped on improving prototype straight after workshop, and her willingness to iterate and prototype solutions based on the feedback received showcased her commitment and skill to delivering high-quality design. Collaborating with Kat was a pleasure, as she consistently brought a positive attitude and a strong sense of teamwork to the table. Her contribution not only enriched the workshop but also had a positive impact on the final outcome.
Design Lead
Kat's leadership skills have been particularly evident in the product discovery for Voluntary Flight Changes. She has successfully aligned with stakeholders and focused on what truly matters validating the possibility to turn off the feature. Her commitment to facilitate team retrospectives underscores her dedication to continual improvement.
Senior UX Researcher
''I'm impressed with how versatile designer Kat is overall and I appreciate that she's able to take any challenge, even switch contexts (chatbot x Helpcenter x Flight changes) and get to the solution that is both business viable and good for users. She has a great sense for detail and I really love how systematic she is when working on a solution which are aspects that indeed contributed to the high-quality outputs of Kat's work.''
Senior Product Manager
Kat's contributions and participation throughout the workshop were truly outstanding, and I wanted to acknowledge her exceptional skills and work on workshop participation and "basic" discussion facilitating. As a participant, Kat has demonstrated an impressive level of engagement and enthusiasm, with active involvement in discussions that helped drive meaningful conversations and fostered a productive atmosphere for everyone involved. Her insights and perspectives were valuable and greatly contributed to the overall success of the workshop. I was particularly impressed with how quickly Kat adapted to feedback and took immediate action for creating basic prototype on the last day of workshop. Kat jumped on improving prototype straight after workshop, and her willingness to iterate and prototype solutions based on the feedback received showcased her commitment and skill to delivering high-quality design. Collaborating with Kat was a pleasure, as she consistently brought a positive attitude and a strong sense of teamwork to the table. Her contribution not only enriched the workshop but also had a positive impact on the final outcome.
Design Lead
Kat's leadership skills have been particularly evident in the product discovery for Voluntary Flight Changes. She has successfully aligned with stakeholders and focused on what truly matters validating the possibility to turn off the feature. Her commitment to facilitate team retrospectives underscores her dedication to continual improvement.