{"id":14486,"date":"2016-07-21T20:46:54","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T03:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uxpin.com\/studio\/?p=14486"},"modified":"2026-03-09T19:58:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T02:58:29","slug":"ux-case-study-the-worlds-first-responsive-airline-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxpin.com\/studio\/blog\/ux-case-study-the-worlds-first-responsive-airline-website\/","title":{"rendered":"UX Case Study: The World\u2019s First Responsive Airline Website"},"content":{"rendered":"

Responsive design is now the industry standard for web design. But it wasn\u2019t always that way.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019ll take a quick trip through time to 2014. We\u2019ll dive deep into the design and launch of the world\u2019s first responsive airline site. You\u2019ll see every detail and decision that lead to one of the most influential web projects in the past couple years. The best practices still ring true today.<\/p>\n

Alaska Airlines chose to partner with Work & Co<\/a>, a new company of fewer than a dozen people at the time. The results of their collaboration?<\/p>\n

Bottom-line results and awards for the first ever responsive airline website, and explosive growth for Work & Co, now a team of more than 100 who still work with Alaska Airlines.<\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Work & Co<\/a><\/p>\n

We spoke with Felipe Memoria, Work & Co\u2019s Founding Partner, about one of the agency\u2019s most popular projects. This is the story of how collaborative design helped push Alaska Airlines to a successful IPO.<\/p>\n

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Ongoing: Designing for the Extremes<\/strong><\/h2>\n

During all stages of the project, one clear goal guided everything: sell more tickets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beautiful part of the entire process is that we were able to focus on the one thing that mattered the most \u2013 not just from a business standpoint but from a user standpoint,\u201d said Felipe Memoria, Founding Partner of the agency.<\/p>\n

Rather than designing based on edge cases and all the flows associated with them, the Work & Co team, working collaboratively with the Alaska Airlines team, focused on one core use case: a single traveler buying a round-trip ticket. The team decided that if they could get the process right for this one use case, they would have a solid baseline to start from.<\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Alaska Airlines<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition, in contrast to the movement towards \u201cmobile-first\u201d design, the entire Alaska Airlines project was dictated by an \u201cextremes-first\u201d approach. Rather than starting with the smallest viewport and then scaling up to the desktop, the team worked with extremes – designing mobile and desktop views simultaneously – and then converging towards the in-between viewports.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Setting One Clear Goal<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The project was intended to move Alaska Airlines from having a website <\/em>to a digital platform<\/em> that could respond to modern travel needs and behaviors. Based on an analysis of their website and revenue, Work & Co recommended that they prioritize rethinking their booking experience in order to improve conversion rates, repeat visits and mobile engagements.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, when you think about it, an airline booking flow is just one big form,\u201d Memoria said. \u201cSo we set out to create something different\u2013not just a better form, but one that was actually enjoyable to use. Thinking about our project in this holistic way let us start designing immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Step Two: Collaborative Concepting<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Throughout the process, the project was defined by a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach.<\/p>\n

Work & Co<\/a> built its agency around this very concept, where everyone has particular strengths but can also serve different roles on the team. For example, someone might be an analytics master, but they might also be a great project manager. In fact, Work & Co has no account managers at all\u2013everyone has technical skills and the soft skills needed to manage projects and client expectations.<\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Work & Co<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the course of the Alaska Airlines project, three product strategists, three designers, and four developers collaborated directly with C-level stakeholders at Alaska Airlines. Beyond just close collaboration with the immediate clients, the team also brought in other critical parts of the organization, such as legal and operations, into the design process. This helped ensure that ideas could be implemented and sustained successfully.<\/p>\n

The concepting phase was spent entirely on solving the one core scenario of a single traveler booking a round trip. For two weeks, three designers with different backgrounds worked on this one issue, which is in stark contrast to a typical project\u2019s division of labor. One designer, for example, was a classic UI designer who thought in terms of grids and colors. Another was more of a new generation of hybrid designer\/developer who could build prototypes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting more heads thinking about concepting made a huge difference to our project,\u201d Memoria said. \u201cIt gives us a higher chance to design something far superior. There is no reason to focus on tangential use cases\u2013by testing and iterating just on the main experience, we can come up with something more pure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team would only formally check in once a day. Sometimes they might switch off on designs to help solve roadblocks. The team actually worked in a meeting room at Alaska Airlines headquarters, with Memoria moving his family from New York to the San Francisco Bay Area to be physically present and immersed with the client.<\/p>\n

Because they were all travelers and Alaska Airlines customers, they were able to quickly draw from existing customer research provided by the client. The team had noticed in the collective research that booking a flight was really all anyone wanted to do, so they had further validation that they were solving the right problem.<\/p>\n

After just two weeks of focused workshops and co-design, the team was ready to present their design strategy to executive stakeholders.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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