2025 · UI/UX Design
Southwest Airlines
Reimagining the mobile booking experience for a beloved American airline — where warmth, speed, and clarity meet at 30,000 feet.
2025 · UI/UX Design
Reimagining the mobile booking experience for a beloved American airline — where warmth, speed, and clarity meet at 30,000 feet.
Overview
Southwest's brand has always been about hospitality — but the mobile booking flow had grown over time into something that no longer reflected that warmth. I worked on redesigning the key booking surfaces to feel faster, clearer, and friendlier, without losing any of the familiarity that loyal passengers rely on.
The project touched fare search, seat selection, check-in, and the post-booking journey.
The Challenge
Every pixel of a legacy booking flow carries the weight of decades of decisions. Any redesign had to be bold enough to feel new, but careful enough not to disrupt the muscle memory of millions of weekly travelers.
I balanced qualitative user interviews with quantitative heuristic review to decide where to hold the line and where to break new ground.
Process
Working from the outside-in, I audited every screen against a set of first principles — fewer taps to book, fewer words on the page, clearer pricing upfront. Each redesigned flow went through 2–3 rounds of prototyping, iterated with real travelers on the phone.
The visual language leaned into Southwest's energetic palette while introducing a tighter typographic system and a new set of motion principles that make the app feel confident in the moments it matters most.
A great airline app shouldn't feel like a negotiation — it should feel like a welcome.
Outcome
Usability testing showed a measurable decrease in time-to-book for first-time users, and the design system I helped shape is now in production across the airline's digital surfaces. The biggest win, though, was the tone — passengers described the new experience as "feels like Southwest."