Travel Companion:
Delivering a 0-1 Travel Experience
Background
The challenge
Trainline had established itself as Europe's leading rail and coach ticket booking platform, but customer engagement dropped significantly after purchase. Users had to navigate through six different entry points to access essential journey information, creating a fragmented experience. With 17% of all trains experiencing disruptions and data showing usage spikes at journey start points, there was a clear need to transform the app from a transaction tool into a true travel companion.
My Role
As the sole lead designer on this zero-to-one initiative, I took the concept from initial idea to fully functional MVP, establishing Trainline's first comprehensive post-booking touchpoint. I led cross-functional workshops and creative sessions to ensure the new surface area would scale across different verticals and meet diverse user needs.
Business context
Starting as a skunkworks initiative under the Platform team, this project aimed to prove out value in creating a new surface area within our product suite that leverages Trainline's unique data to shape customer behaviors during travel, increase app stickiness, improve retention metrics, and build greater trust with customers.
Key insights
- Users struggled with a fragmented experience, having to navigate through 6 different entry points to access essential information like the Live tracker and tickets
- Journey disruptions (affecting 17% of all trains) directly correlated with increased app usage
- More changes in a journey directly correlated with higher app usage
- For travelers with flexible tickets, the real-time information available wasn't necessarily for the specific train they were on
- Usage data showed spikes at the start of journeys, indicating customers were leaving it until the last minute to access travel information
Without a single home for travel information, the team saw a significant opportunity to transform the app from a pure transaction tool into a continuous travel companion, helping travelers stay informed with real-time information during their journeys.
Recognizing the need for travelers to access up-to-date, real-time information during their journeys, we centered our approach around a key question:
Problem
How might we help travelers easily access all their essential journey information at the right moments during their travel experience?
Opportunity
Create the first dedicated post-booking experience within Trainline, bringing all essential journey information into one intuitive space to support travelers throughout their entire journey - not just during ticket purchase.
Hypothesis
By bringing the most useful on-the-day travel information together in one place, we will help users access that info more quickly and easily while traveling and become the go-to travel companion for people journeying throughout the UK and Europe.
Process
Collaborative Approach
To ensure a comprehensive solution, I led a highly collaborative process, bringing together diverse vertical teams through interactive workshops where each contributed their unique expertise to a new shared space. I dedicated time with my immediate team to have 'creative noodling' sessions for unconstrained exploration of the possibilities for this new real estate.
Design Principles
My design process began with these three guiding principles as the foundation, ensuring each final design resonated both functionally and emotionally.
The Solution
Digital postcards sent out to update the entire org
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Socializing the vision
These shareouts not only directed various teams towards one unified futuristic Search vision, but also had already successfully launched 5 key projects, generating £6.88M in net ticket sales. Certain features launched directly addressed the user needs of easy purchasing and finding the best journey options, such as an updated modern search form to help with speed of input, an entrypoint to edit search more flexibly, and journey feature highlights. This strategic execution transformed the search experience while driving significant revenue growth.
Feature launch shareout with the entire Product team
Beyond the first launch
Beyond delivering successful v1 and v2 releases, I mapped out all potential challenges and opportunities, creating exploratory designs that shaped our roadmap for future versions. This forward-thinking approach not only set our direction for the next Fiscal Year but ensured a smooth handoff to the team taking ownership next.
Impact and results
Tangible impact
- Created valuable new real estate scalable to other teams for merchandising
- Established foundation for expanding Trainline's post-sales experience
- Positioned the business and transformed user perception of Trainline from just a ticket seller to an essential travel companion
Key Learnings
This project demonstrated that addressing the complete customer journey, not just the purchase moment, creates significant business value while simultaneously solving real user pain points. By bringing the most relevant information together in one place, we created a more intuitive, stress-free travel experience that users return to throughout their journey.
