United Airlines
I am the lead designer for Unitedâs âShoppingâ / âRevenueâ experiences across desktop and mobile app. I successfully introduced new forms of payment that accounted for an estimated $250 million in revenues, I also led the initiative to overhaul âReshopâ (the process where customers can change their current flights). Lastly, I led the design for a new benefit initiative with our partner JP Morgan Chase (revenue facing).
The role:
Dec 2022 - present
Senior Designer - Lead
+20 projects / features
Contributions:
$250 million revenue
6% of all payments
+18% Change flights conversion
Above are graphics from the Digital Gift Card
project that I led. Releasing late 2025.
Money + Miles
I led the implementation of a new form of payment that generated
approximately $250 million in revenue per year.
Challenge
Customers canât combine money (fiat currency) AND miles to pay for flights. Shopping for flights using miles has strict miles balance criteria preventing many customers from using their miles.
Original revenue flows
Once customers start a search for flights using
money
or miles, they are committed to viewing
fare prices, choosing other add-ons and paying
their grand total with either money or miles.
To the left is the original flight search results screen (2023). Near the top of the screen, you can see customers can toggle between Money and Miles.
Team layout (Money + Miles)
Customers
170 millions / year
Nate
Data insights
Akancha & Brian
Principals
Brenda & Sebastian
Product owners
John (Me)
Lead designer
Ashley, Nadia & Tiffany
Supporting designers
Rodney & Purshottam
Business analysts
Dev team
Desktop & mobile
developers
Solution
Allow for a third payment avenue, âMoney + Milesâ. This new workstream is perfect for those customers who want to take advantage of their current miles balance and want to use it to help them reduce the price of fares and trip add-ons, like seat upgrades.
New Revenue flows
Now customers can start a search for flights using
money, miles or money & miles. Customers
can now view fare prices, choose add-ons and pay
their
grand total with both money and miles.
Conclusion
By allowing customers to toggle on âMoney + Milesâ flight search results prices can be discounted by the maximum amount of miles that customers have. This helps promote customers to buy more flights and to use their miles more frequently. Finally, on the checkout screen, the customer can fine-tune the exact amount of miles they want to apply to the total price.
Success!
After 6 months, Money + Miles as a form of payment accounted for 6% of all customer payments across all platforms (est. $250 million per year). This is more than double the number of flight purchases made with Apple Pay and Alipay, combined.
Change flights
I conceptualized and implemented an industry leading way for customers to change their flights, allowing for unparalleled flexibility across all of Unitedâs platforms.
In 2024 United Airlines invested $225 million into technology and digital innovations, one focus area was making flights more âflexibleâ. The âMore flexibilityâ strategy is a key differentiator for United Airlines brand.
Challenge
Customers are having a hard time navigating and completing the task of, changing their reservation from their mobile app.
Analysis: Original change flights flow
Customers found the original change flights flow to be limiting and it seemed to cause distress and calls to the United service center.
Some customers were confused with the flight blocks and were not sure which flight is which.
Many customers also need to change the travelers on their flights and were confused on how to do that.
Customers were confused on the pricing and which fare / cabin type they would get.
Some customers would back track to check what their original flights were.
User test 1: Low fidelity wireframe
The structured layout made it easy for testers to navigate easily and pick what they would like to change.â
Testers said they were now sure that they were going to edit the return flight specifically.â The math was simple and everyone understood the exact amount they owed.
Added traditional seat-map, to prevent confusion when booking new flights
Testers were sure about the changes to the date and time of the flight and the price difference.â
User test 2: Mid fidelity
Testers loved the conversational style âhand-holdingâ throughout the process.â
Having the traveler section above the flights tested better.
So far so good!
Testers liked having the changes highlighted in the block, while still having access to their original flights.
Very positive response by testers on this iteration.
Solution
Given the right amount of guidance and support testers felt confident to make self-guided changes to their existing flights.
Final: High fidelity
Conclusion
By over-communicating the actions customers can take and what their
next expected steps in the workflow should be, we
were able to remove the perceived âriskâ customers
felt while making such a big decision like changing their flights.
Success!
At a 5% release throttle we were able to increase out key success metics by 18%.