IndiGo UX Revamp

My work with IndiGo started with a hard truth: India's largest airline — 100M+ passengers a year across 100+ destinations — had a digital booking experience that hadn't kept up. Years of design debt had piled up: flows fragmented across web, mWeb, and native apps, inconsistent UI patterns, and a booking funnel that was quietly bleeding users at every step.

And the ambition was only growing. IndiGo was pushing into hotels, loyalty, and ancillary marketplaces — none of which had the cohesive, scalable design foundation they'd need. Building that foundation became the heart of the work.

The data told a stark story: of 1.39M users landing on the flight search page monthly, only 49K completed a booking — a 96.4% drop-off rate end-to-end. The steepest cliff was between search results and passenger details (73.9% drop-off), followed by a massive 50.3% drop at the add-ons stage. Payment initiation saw another 41% abandonment. The experience was functional but far from optimised, and IndiGo was leaving significant revenue on the table.

Stakeholder & User Research

I led a comprehensive research phase involving 8 stakeholder interviews across product, marketing, technology, and customer support leadership — including the Head of Marketplaces, AVP Digital & Marketing, Director of Tech, and Director of Customer Support. This gave us a 360° understanding of business priorities, technical constraints, and customer pain points at an organisational level.

Simultaneously, we conducted 20 user interviews across carefully recruited segments: solo travellers, families, business travellers, first-time flyers, elderly passengers with accessibility needs, corporate SME users, and even dedicated IndiGo "haters" who had switched to competitors. We tested across mobile and web, domestic and international journeys, covering tier 1, 2, and 3 cities.

Competitive Benchmarking

We ran a deep UX audit of competitor platforms — Air India Express, MakeMyTrip, and international carriers like Virgin Atlantic — evaluating everything from search widget ergonomics to web check-in flows. This helped identify where IndiGo was behind the curve and where we could leapfrog.

Feature Prioritisation & Design Sprints

With research insights consolidated, I facilitated a feature prioritisation exercise with the product and business teams, scoring 29 feature ideas across a priority matrix. High-priority items included: fare calendar, payment retry mechanism, document storage, one-click re-booking, auto check-in, and nearest airport finder.

We operated in weekly design sprints — wireframes through visual design — getting structured feedback from business stakeholders (Basant, Nikhil, Sudhanshu) at each stage. The sprint cadence covered homepage, passenger details, add-ons, seat selection, payment, and search results — each reviewed across desktop, mWeb, Android, and iOS.

[TODO: Distill the 2–3 insights that reframed the design direction — e.g., the funnel wasn't uniformly leaky (three specific choke points drove most loss), the add-ons page buried value by structuring around passengers instead of categories, and cross-platform inconsistency compounded cognitive load more than any single screen's issues.]

Simplified Booking Funnel

The redesigned booking flow cut unnecessary steps and cognitive load at every stage. The homepage was decluttered — stakeholder feedback had correctly flagged that "Get Inspired," "Discover," and "Plan" tabs were redundant, so we consolidated them into a single exploration experience integrated with IndiGo's #NoFilter content platform. Offers were given prominent placement, and a contextual hero banner system replaced the static layout.

The search results page was rethought with a fare calendar showing 4 months of pricing, enabling users to make quick decisions. The passenger details flow was streamlined — instead of a cumbersome "favourite passenger" system, we adopted a MakeMyTrip-style inline passenger list with single-tap selection.

Reimagined Add-Ons Experience

The original add-ons page was the second-biggest drop-off point. We shifted from a per-passenger add-on model (which buried the value proposition) to a category-first approach that introduced each add-on with its benefit before asking users to select for specific passengers. Mandatory per-PNR add-ons were handled automatically to reduce friction.

Payment & Checkout Overhaul

The payment page was redesigned with a persistent but collapsible review summary, vertical FOP (form of payment) layout replacing the cramped horizontal scroll, clear visibility of baggage information, refund/cancellation terms, and a prominent offer-change option. The "Hold & Pay Later" feature was repositioned under IndiGo Specials for better discoverability.

Cross-Platform Design System

To ensure consistency across 4 platforms, I drove the creation of a unified component library and interaction patterns — documented in IndiGo's first comprehensive design system. This became the foundation for all subsequent product launches including hotels and loyalty.

Hotels Marketplace (6E Platform)

Building on the redesign foundation, I led the UX for IndiGo's new hotel marketplace — a completely new revenue vertical. The design covered the full booking journey across 7 user personas (solo, couple, friends, family, anonymous, SEO, loyalty members), delivered across 8 sprints from March to May 2023. Key innovations included the "6E+" tagged hotel concept (offering perks like early check-in, free upgrades, and flight-related benefits), gamified "6E Special Deal" mystery hotels, and a streamlined booking flow designed to require fewer clicks than established OTAs like MakeMyTrip and Booking.com.

Dark Pattern Compliance

India's Consumer Protection Authority introduced Dark Pattern Guidelines in late 2023. I proactively led a compliance audit of every screen in the booking funnel — mapping each guideline (false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm shaming, drip pricing, interface interference, and 8 others) against our design patterns. This ensured IndiGo's redesign was not only better for users but legally compliant.

[TODO: Stakeholder alignment — how product, marketing, tech, and customer-support priorities were reconciled; what got dropped from the 29-feature prioritisation and why; decisions you held firm on.]

The redesigned booking funnel, deployed progressively across web and native platforms, delivered measurable improvements in conversion at every stage. The design system established during this engagement became the single source of truth for IndiGo's rapidly expanding digital product portfolio, enabling faster feature delivery and consistent user experiences across flights, hotels, and the upcoming loyalty program.

[TODO: Honest post-mortem — what you'd do differently, what worked beyond expectation, what remains open, where the work is headed next.]