Giving easyJet a specific audience to own: exchange students
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
8-week Academic Project
Team
4 Designers
Skills
UX/UI Design
Art Direction
User Research
Project Management
Context
easyJet is a well-known low-cost airline in Europe, focused on providing accessible travel fares.
Despite this, market research showed the company has been growing more slowly than its competitors. This case study explores how we approached that problem.
easyGo is a digital solution designed to reposition easyJet as a travel partner for exchange students — streamlining trip planning while reinforcing easyJet's brand as youthful and adventurous.
Research 1: Market Research
Finding a new audience
Despite being a well-known low-cost airline, easyJet has been facing stagnant growth compared to competitors like Ryanair, Wizz Air, and Jet2.
We started by studying the competition to understand what set each of them apart.
Offers more “premium" service at a slightly higher price
Attracts senior travellers on holiday
Each competitor owned a distinct audience. easyJet didn't — its offering was accessible, but not aspirational to any one group.
Brand Position Map
Looking at easyJet's own brand pillars, one value stood out: . We used it to brainstorm a demographic easyJet could own without overlapping with competitors, and landed on exchange students — a group that arrives in Europe every semester with one shared goal: to explore as much as possible before their program ends.
Brand Values
Exchange Student Market Value
Research 2: Audience Research
How exchange students actually plan
To ground the audience opportunity in real behaviour rather than assumption, we combined breadth and depth:
A survey of 113 respondents with exchange program experience in Europe, to find patterns at scale
5 follow-up interviews to understand the reasoning behind those patterns
Insight 1
Short Trips > Long Trips
Exchange students treat their time abroad as finite from day one. Rather than saving travel for school breaks, they plan trips during regular weeks too — often building their course schedules around creating long weekends. The goal isn't one big trip; it's as many as their time and budget allow.
Insight 2
Destination is Negotiable, Schedule Isn't
Exchange students usually start planning their next trip shortly after returning from the last one, or even multiple at a time. Their process typically follows two steps:
Search for a destination
Look for a transportation that fits their schedule and budget
This order creates friction. Because destination comes first, students often find a place they like only to discover it doesn't fit their schedule or budget — forcing them to restart, repeatedly opening and closing tabs and re-entering the same details across sites.
The real pain point isn't finding a destination; it's not knowing upfront which destinations already fit their schedule and budget.
Flipping that order — surfacing which destinations already fit a student's schedule and budget before they get attached to one that doesn't — became the starting point for easyGo.
Design Process
User Testing & Iteration
We tested the wireframes with a small group of target users and gathered feedback on their experience.
Students liked how the feed adjusted to their preferences, but wanted more control — specifically, filters for price, duration, and departure date. At the same time, they didn't want a longer onboarding to get there.
That tension shaped the final design: we added the requested filters while trimming the information collected during onboarding, so the added control didn't come at the cost of a longer setup.
Design Solution
easyGo has two core pieces: a feed that filters trips down to what already fits a student's time and budget, and a tracker that turns their travel history into something worth coming back to see
Solution 1: Tailored Feed
Already Fits
Based on the schedule, budget, and interests collected during onboarding, the feed only shows fares that already fit — flipping the order identified in research, so students see what's possible before they get attached to a destination that doesn't work.
Because the filtering happens upfront, students don't need to open multiple tabs or re-enter the same details across sites to check if a trip works.
Solution 2: Dashboard
Look Back on Your Travel
Since exchange students are working against a fixed clock — one semester, one budget — the dashboard tracks their travel progress within that window: trips taken, places visited, time remaining. It's designed to make progress visible and, ideally, nudge them toward booking the next trip before the semester runs out.
Because the filtering happens upfront, students don't need to open multiple tabs or re-enter the same details across sites to check if a trip works.
Visual Design
The visual design builds on easyJet's existing brand identity, with a youthful, adventurous twist:
Colour: The iconic easyJet orange was reinterpreted to evoke a sunrise — a fresh start, a new adventure.
Layout: Inspired by airplane controls and GPS systems, the interface favours a navigational feel suited to travel planning.
Value Proposition
To Exchange Students
easyGo removes the need to check multiple platforms — saving the time currently lost to comparing tabs and restarting searches.
To easyJet
easyGo gives easyJet a specific, underserved audience to own — exchange students — differentiating the airline in a market where every competitor already has a distinct edge.
Personal Contribution
I led the product strategy behind targeting exchange students and shaping the brand's youthful direction, working closely with the team on art direction and UI.
I also acted as project manager, keeping the team on track against agreed goals and timeline from research through execution.
What I Learned
Structure Turns Ambiguity into Direction
This project meant balancing business goals, user needs, and brand identity into one coherent solution. The hardest part was navigating ambiguity — there were moments the team felt uncertain of the direction. Applying design methodology consistently gave us a way to work through that uncertainty rather than around it, and it's what eventually clarified the direction we landed on.