A research-led direction for ANA's global website

ANA was reconsidering its Japanese and English web experiences when I joined the IBM iX team. I worked in Chicago and Tokyo on the research and direction for the global website, with western business travelers as a focus.

I started by assessing the previous agency work, comparing the existing site with US and European airline experiences, and examining performance and usability issues. Stakeholder interviews helped me understand ANA's institutional strengths and the obstacles the redesign would need to address.

The previous agency had already conducted customer research. My contribution was to assess that material and add stakeholder interviews and experience review, then help the team turn what we learned into a direction.

I helped facilitate a two-day design-thinking session in Tokyo. We worked through breakdowns in the current experience and explored how a future service could respond to traveler needs.

My traveler persona gives that conversation a concrete focus: a North American business traveler who values self-service and efficiency but also wants to discover places around a work trip. The artifact brings booking friction, timely flight information, and arrival support into the same discussion.

I made desktop and mobile concepts to give the direction a visual form. The desktop exploration places a flight search beside flexible-date destination ideas. That lets a specific booking task and a more open-ended trip search share the page.

The mobile concept explores a different moment: check-in and a boarding pass, with hotels, cars, flights, and trips alongside it. Its vivid color and night-time imagery explore how the travel experience could carry more character across screens.

I used these concepts to explore visual and interaction direction within the wider IBM iX engagement.

I brought the research and workshop findings into UX 2020, a set of design principles and a feature roadmap focused on western business travelers. The work connected what ANA wanted to improve with the customer needs the team had been discussing.

The roadmap belonged to a collaborative engagement with ANA and the IBM iX teams in Chicago and Tokyo. My contribution was research, facilitation, direction, and the concepts shown here.