AltexSoft & Cornerstone Information Systems: Reimagining the User Experience for a Corporate Travel Management Solution
- Business domain
- Travel
- Services
- Travel Technology Practice
- Technology
- UI/UX
Background
Cornerstone Information Systems® is a leading travel technology provider with more than 600 clients operating globally, including travel management companies, online travel agencies, corporate travel departments, and global distribution systems.
The 4site™ platform, built in cooperation with AltexSoft, aims at automating travel planning and trip management. It offers powerful business intelligence features, providing the users with a complete control over their journeys, and 24/7 support to handle disruptions.
Challenges
The estimated cost of travel disruptions is $60 billion per year. With the number of airline passengers expected to reach 7.3 billion by 2034, the costs of disrupted flights will skyrocket.
Cornerstone was looking for a simple yet efficient solution for proactive airline disruption management, able to save billions of dollars for travel providers and travelers globally.
Value Delivered
The Process
Having spent about a year working on the idea of the 4site tool and drafting the basics, the company addressed AltexSoft with a request to handle core aspects of product development, including business analysis, UI/UX consulting, and engineering.
In order to achieve maximum performance efficiency in business analysis, solution architecture and prototyping, a hybrid approach to dedicated team cooperation model has been chosen. As a result, the part of our team traveled to the client’s business location in order to join forces with the client’s in-house team and jumpstart the project.
STEP 1: Requirements specification
Goal: Elaborate and finalize the main user personas for the future product taking into account the specifics of corporate travel industry and disruption management business.
Process: AltexSoft team of project manager, UX designer/business analyst and software engineers has spent three weeks at the client’s office for a deep dive into the industry and product specifics with the Cornerstone product team.
Deliverables: Valuable insights about the industry and client’s business, profound user personas analysis, clear vision of the product goals, for every persona.
STEP 2: Mapping the hierarchy of roles and entities
Goal: Define and visualize the inner information architecture of the product, structure it according to the roles and assigned functionality.
Process: Documenting the features and relations between the product modules, we were able to break down the scope of the project into smaller pieces and identify implementation priorities, from level 1 (critical) issues to level 7 (nice to have add-ons).
STEP 3: Identifying user journeys and testing the concept
Goal: Propose the navigation flow, outline user journeys.
Process: The team was able to map out possible user journeys for the future product, including custom variations of the app flow for every type of user.
Deliverables: Finalized product concept and navigation.
STEP 4: Prototyping, identifying the MVP
Goal: Lay the groundwork for product design
Process: We analyzed and fine-tuned initial prototypes, provided by the client, to match the product concept. Based on updated prototypes, the team created the basic wireframes and then converted them into clickable, interactive prototypes.
Deliverables: Interactive product prototypes (80+ web app screens), finalized specifications and outlined MVP scope.
STEP 5: Design
Goal: Develop the visual image of the product and style guide.
Process: AltexSoft UX/UI team has developed UI design for the web app (based on the updated prototypes) and mobile app (created from the ground up). The most important features required extremely elaborate implementation, which lead us to creating numerous design concepts.
Deliverables: Complete user interface design for web and mobile app, product style guide.
4site Mobile App
STEP 6: Documenting the functional specifications
Goal: Outline the requirements and functionality of the future product.
Process: Specification writing was running in parallel with all previous steps. The business analyst compiled all related functional requirements for every new screen or feature added by the team. Completed parts on the document were regularly submitted for client review and updated as necessary.
Deliverables: Elaborated functional specifications document for both web and mobile app – total 260+ pages.
STEP 7: Ongoing design support
Goal: Provide the engineering team with the required design elements and support the product’s future development.
Process: In the process of product implementation minor tweaks of UI elements or features were needed, which resulted in making the software engineering process more efficient. Hence, our designers actively contributed to the product development process until the project completion.
Deliverables: Full-fledged product, and its ongoing improvement through added features design.
Approach and Technical Info
After the UX/UI design process was completed, our team proceeded with the product engineering. Both mobile application and web dashboard were developed in full accordance with the client’s requirements. The product is currently a part of Cornerstone Information Systems portfolio of travel management software.