Improving User Interfaces in the Travel Industry

International user experience research, participatory design sessions and user testing are helping Amadeus design a new intuitive graphical interface for their complex and powerful IT systems.    

Amadeus designs IT systems which connect travel agents with their suppliers; powering travel booking, e-ticketing, reservation and inventory management systems across the world.  Their customers range from global airlines to independent hotels, their flagship booking tool, Selling Platform, sits on the desks of nearly 400,000 travel agents worldwide.

The issues 

Amadeus’ strengths have traditionally been in the data management and complex functionality of its back-end systems.  Their command based user interface is fast and powerful, but it requires a trained and experienced user.

They saw an opportunity to add value and give their customers a competitive advantage by introducing a more intuitive, graphical user interface.  The new interface will provide their travel agents with all the information they need to provide an excellent service to their customers.

What we did 

Michel Rouse, Unit Manager, Project Governance and User Experience explains “We decided to involve a neutral third party to build on the work already done by our in-house user experience team.  This made sure we were truly innovative and not influenced by our preconceptions and detailed knowledge of the system architecture.  It also allowed us to quickly gain experience from other IT sectors, many of which have faced the same challenges.

System Concepts were highly recommended to us as a company at the forefront of user experience research.  Their multicultural make-up and their exposure to global projects made them a perfect fit for Amadeus.  Due to their dynamic team, we have been able to quickly capitalise on their experience in previous projects.” 

The System Concepts team started work by gathering information from a range of people in a number of different ways.  We:

• Interviewed travel agents throughout Europe to understand exactly what information they needed for particular tasks, and how it needed to be displayed. 
• Ran workshops with Amadeus technical and commercial employees to understand the business goals and technical constraints of the project.
• Generated design ideas and explored design solutions by running design and testing sessions with travel agents throughout Europe. 

We illustrated the ideas with basic paper screen designs to optimise the information display.  More complex clickable mock-ups were then used to measure the integrity of the information flow, focussing on the information structure, labelling and navigation. 

The requirements for the interface varied significantly depending on users’ roles, responsibilities, experience, business processes and culture.

Our results were presented to the client teams as:

• Screen mock-ups and templates for core tasks
• Polished hi-fidelity screen designs
• ‘Personas’ describing typical users to help the design team relate to their end users and understand their needs.

We refined and re-tested the concepts in further areas of Europe and North America until we were satisfied with the logic and the dataflow.  The resulting designs were either incorporated directly into Amadeus’s products or into prototypes used for the next stage of user testing.

What did the client think? 

The team at Amadeus is very pleased with the progress the project has made.  Isabelle Villevieille, a UX Researcher with Amadeus explains:

System Concepts has worked very successfully with our team, allowing us to test our ideas more widely and more quickly than we could do by ourselves, while building on the knowledge we have in-house.

Michel Rouse adds:

System Concepts has clearly understood the aims of our business and worked flexibly to meet the needs of all departments.  Their expertise in running complex, multi-country user research has been invaluable and we have produced some innovative design solutions.  They have truly helped us reach the next level in user-centric design.

System Concepts continues to work with Amadeus in Europe, Asia and North America helping them to define and design interfaces which provide an efficient, effective and satisfying user experience.