UX Designer · Southwest Airlines
Check-in Flow Redesign
The check-in flow is one of the most time-sensitive experiences on southwest.com. Customers arrive with a departure looming, often on a mobile device, and need to complete a multi-step task without friction or confusion. As part of the UX team, I contributed to a redesign of the check-in experience focused on improving the mobile web flow — a surface that had accumulated desktop-first assumptions over time.
Context
Southwest's check-in flow at the time handled a high volume of customers across a range of devices. Mobile web usage was growing, and the existing flow hadn't been designed with that context as a priority. The work was about bringing parity to the mobile experience — reducing the steps and friction that made check-in harder than it needed to be on a small screen.
The design work
Working on the UX team, I contributed to wireframing, flow mapping, and design iteration across the check-in steps. The focus was on reducing cognitive load at each step, improving how boarding information was surfaced, and making sure the experience held up on the device sizes and network conditions customers were actually using.
Outcome
The redesigned check-in experience improved the mobile web flow and addressed several pain points that had built up on smaller screens. It was an early lesson in designing for the full range of customer contexts, not just the desktop-first assumptions baked into an older flow.