WEB & APP MIGRATION
Migrating United's booking flow to a new brand and design system, without disrupting the experience millions of travelers rely on.
United Airlines' company-wide rebrand introduced a new, WCAG-compliant Design Language System (DLS) called Atmos. I partnered with the CoreUX team applying Atmos to the booking flow, the experience that lets travelers search, book, and shop for flights, owning the Traveler Info page as well as the end-to-end booking journey.
WHO IT’S FOR
Millions of United Airlines travelers booking flights through united.com and the mobile app
MY ROLE
Product Design & UX
End-to-End Design
Design System Migration
OPPORTUNITY
United needed to migrate the booking flow, one of the highest-traffic, most conversion-critical paths on united.com, onto its new Atmos design system as part of a company-wide rebrand. The challenge: rebuild every screen on the new brand standard without introducing friction into a flow that was already converting, keeping the flow seamless while identifying opportunities to streamline it further and enhance the customer experience, logging them for the backlog.
APPROACH
Audited the existing booking flow against the new Atmos component library, flagging where existing components covered our needs and where the Traveler Info page required new patterns. From there, we aligned as a team on priorities for the redesign.
I owned the redesign of the Traveler Info page, identifying it’s distinct use cases taking it from flow mapping to high-fidelity design.
Taking the existing Traveler Info page, I rebuilt the forms and layout to align with the new brand guidelines and design system, while preserving the clarity travelers need when entering time-sensitive information.
The page needed to support several distinct paths: Signed-in travelers, guests booking without an account, unaccompanied minors, and travelers requiring an extra seat, each with its own requirements and design considerations like validation logic.
Signed-In Traveler Experience
For signed-in travelers, we pre-filled saved profile details, so the flow moves faster without asking travelers to re-enter information they've already given United.
Signed-In Experience for Mobile
On mobile, signed-in travelers see their saved details pre-filled, keeping the flow just as seamless on mobile orientation.
Guest Experience
For guests booking without an account, the flow shifts to manual entry, prompting for the same information a signed-in profile would normally provide, without assuming any prior relationship with United.
UNACCOMPANIED MINOR PATH
Traveling alone comes with extra responsibility, for United and for the adults booking on a child's behalf. This path needed to add safeguards and clarity without adding friction.
Booking for an unaccompanied minor triggers a distinct version of the flow: search results filter to nonstop-only flights, guardians must acknowledge United's unaccompanied minor policy before continuing, seat selection is replaced with an auto-assignment notice, and the flow collects drop-off and pickup details for each adult involved.
A key decision was surfacing the policy acknowledgment early, before travelers invest time in the booking flow, so expectations around fees and requirements are clear upfront rather than as a surprise at checkout.
Bringing the end-to-end booking flow together
With everyone's sections coming together, we built a shared checklist to keep Atmos applied consistently across the flow, reviewing each part before handoff.
Once the other designers on the team completed their respective sections of the booking flow, as a team, we finalized the end-to-end experience, ensuring the Traveler Info page and the surrounding steps felt like one consistent journey. This work was done in partnership with our engineering teams to prepare the happy path for developer handoff ahead of United's initial rebrand launch.
United's Atmos rebrand launched across United.com and the United app in May 2024, reaching 16.2 million users across the App Store and Google Play.
Within that launch, the booking flow, including the Traveler Info page, shipped on the new brand system without disrupting the experience travelers rely on to complete a booking. Bringing the end-to-end flow together across multiple designers' work and coordinating closely with engineering helped ensure a consistent, launch-ready experience for one of United's highest-traffic paths.
