American Airlines · Etihad Airways · Metafic
Aviation booking & loyalty
Booking flows, loyalty programs, support tools, and an AR airport-wayfinding concept across two of the world's largest airlines.
- Industry
- American Airlines · Etihad Airways · Metafic
- Expertise
- Lead product designer
- Development period
- 2022 — 2024
- Deliverables
- iOS / Android / Web / AR concept
About the project
Booking flows, loyalty programs, support tools, and an AR airport-wayfinding concept across two of the world's largest airlines.
Challenge
Airline apps carry high-stakes tasks, policy complexity, and premium brand expectations in the same session.
Result
A calmer Etihad system where booking, Ask AI, responsive web, and AR wayfinding share one clear product language.
Problem
Airline products must make high-stakes travel tasks feel calm, premium, and trustworthy.
Role
Lead product designer
Key decisions
Promoted Ask AI, redesigned home hierarchy, expanded responsive web, and explored AR wayfinding.
Outcome
A clearer travel system across mobile, web, AI support, and airport navigation.
Executive summary
The project in one scan.
- Status
- Client / professional work
- My role
- Lead product designer
- Deliverables
- iOS / Android / Web / AR concept
- Problem
- Airline apps carry high-stakes tasks, policy complexity, and premium brand expectations in the same session.
- Key decisions
- Promoted Ask AI, redesigned home hierarchy, expanded responsive web, and explored AR wayfinding.
- Outcome
- A calmer Etihad system where booking, Ask AI, responsive web, and AR wayfinding share one clear product language.
Context
At Metafic I led product design across multiple Etihad surfaces — the consumer booking app, the AI travel assistant (“Ask Etihad AI”), the responsive web booking experience, and exploratory work on an AR airport-wayfinding concept. The engagement spanned 2022 to 2024, alongside parallel work for American Airlines.
Airline apps are deceptively hard. The brand promises premium travel; most apps deliver boarding-pass PDFs. The majority of every journey is the same handful of moments — book, check in, find a gate, get one specific answer. Each one needs to feel calm, not transactional.
The work split into three threads, each addressed in a section below:
- Reimagining the home — introducing AI without breaking trust
- Building Ask Etihad AI — a first-class assistant, not a bolted-on chat bot
- Exploring AR wayfinding — for the most stressful 12 minutes of any journey
Decision 01 · Reimagining the home
Same brand,new center of gravity.
The original home was a vertical stack: action tabs, search widget, a destinations card, three feature tiles, navigation. It worked. It also felt like a 2018 banking app.
The redesign kept the booking primacy — but introduced three deliberate changes:
"Ask AI" promoted to a primary tab
Not buried in Settings, not a floating action button. It sits next to Book, Manage, Check-in, and Flight status, with a "New" badge for awareness. Promoting AI to the same hierarchy as Book signals it's a real feature, not a beta.
"Choose Well" tagline added to the hero
Etihad's brand pillar made literal. Two words, gold accent. Anchors the experience to the brand position rather than the booking widget alone.
"Extraordinary experiences" card
Replaces the previous "To the world and beyond." Specific imagery — Abu Dhabi mosques at golden hour — does more work than the abstract phrasing it replaces.
Decision 02 · Ask Etihad AI
Intelligencethat earns its tab.
The brief was simple: build a conversational layer for the boring-but-frequent questions. Baggage, fares, upgrades, visa requirements. As light as an in-app FAQ but as capable as a senior support agent.
Five design decisions shape the surface:
Quick-action chips at the top
The four highest-frequency queries sit immediately below the greeting. Most users don't type — they tap. Chips honor that.
Structured answers, not chat blobs
A baggage answer returns an iconified list — bag icon for the main allowance, a personal-item icon, with caveats in a separate note. Easier to scan, harder to misread.
Feedback + copy on every response
Thumbs up, thumbs down, copy-to-clipboard. Lightweight enough to use, signal enough to evaluate quality post-ship.
Suggested follow-ups in line
After the baggage answer: "What about Business Class? · Sports equipment allowance · Extra bags." Anticipates the next question without forcing the user to think.
Honest disclaimer at the bottom
"Etihad AI can make mistakes. Please check important info." Plain English, with a "Learn more" link. Trust through transparency, not avoidance.
Decision 03 · Responsive web
The full Etihad,in your browser.
The mobile design earned the right to scale up. The web home brings the Ask AI side panel front-and-centre — always visible to the right of the booking widget, accepting prompts directly. "Continue your journey" cards surface a saved trip without forcing a return to a dashboard.
Two variants explored: a dark, premium scheme for the international-traveler segment, and a booking-focused variant that anchors the AI panel mid-flow. Both share the same component vocabulary and reduce to mobile gracefully.
Decision 04 · Exploration
AR wayfinding,
from hand to gate.
The most stressful 12 minutes of a journey: walking from security to the gate with a boarding pass that says "Gate 33" and signs that say "Gates 30-50." The exploratory AR work targets exactly this.
The point isn't AR-for-AR's-sake — it's that for this one task, when you're tired in an unfamiliar terminal, AR is genuinely better than signs or 2D maps. The arrows are where you're already looking: at the floor. Flight info pinned to the top, a confirming direction card at the bottom, and three subtle action buttons — Audio (for low-vision users), Help, Map (the traditional 2D backup).
Internal exploration · concept-level · 2024
Outcome
Across the engagement, the Etihad surfaces moved from "capable but cold" to a system that feels current, premium, and quietly intelligent. The Ask AI introduction didn't cannibalize human support — it absorbed the high-frequency, low-judgement queries (baggage, schedules, policy lookups) so agents could focus on the harder, higher-stakes ones.
The biggest lesson: AI in airline apps works when it's scoped, structured, and honest. The chips, the iconified answers, and the disclaimer all serve the same goal — never let the user mistake confident phrasing for confirmed truth.
Role
Lead product designer
Studio
Metafic
Years
2022 — 2024
Surfaces
iOS · Android · Web · AR concept
Other projects
Job-matching & AI hiring
GoodSpace / 2021 — 2022