Making ticket booking faster, clearer, and less frustrating

Redesigning the UTS ticket booking experience to
reduce friction in navigation, login, and ticket generation.

Role

UX Designer

Duration

1 Month

Tools

Figma , FigJam , Maze

Prototype Link

The Challenge

UTS is the Indian Railways app that let people book unreserved train tickets from their phone to avoid standing in a station queue. The project involved identifying usability issues, simplify the booking journey, and redesign key interactions to reduce friction and improve clarity.

Impact

9 → 4 steps

booking dropped

85.7%

task success rate

4.2/5 → 4.8/5

Projected rating jump

Design Approach

Discovery

Primary Research

Gathered user insights through surveys and interviews with daily commuters.

Secondary Research

Analyzed app reviews, community forums, and competitor apps to validate key pain points.

UX Audit

Evaluated the existing booking experience to identify usability gaps and opportunities.

Define

Research Synthesis

Synthesized research into recurring behavioral patterns and user needs.

Problem Defining

Defined the core challenge affecting commuters during ticket booking.

Design Principles

Established guiding principles to ensure the solution stayed focused on speed, simplicity, and repeatability.

Design

User Flow

Explored flows to identify the most intuitive booking experience.

Feature Design

Designed solutions such as Quick Rebooking, Saved Journeys, and a simplified booking flow to reduce user effort.

Prototyping

Created interactive prototypes to visualize the experience and prepare it for usability testing.

Validate

Usability Testing

Tested the redesigned flow with commuters to evaluate ease of use and task completion.

Iterate

Refined navigation, layouts, and interactions based on user feedback and testing insights.

Final Outcome

Delivered a streamlined booking experience focused on reducing friction and making repeat bookings faster.

Why We Picked This Up?

We noticed users were dropping off during ticket booking. The process was working, but not
working well enough for people to complete it smoothly.

Research

Understanding the Commuter's Journey

We started with conducting primary and secondary research to understand how commuters
book tickets, where they face friction, and what prevents a seamless booking experience.

Primary Research

In-depth Interviews

Frequent Traveller
Daily Commuter
New User

Conducted interviews with daily local train commuters to map their journeys, trigger points, and physical behaviours on active platforms

25+

Survey Responses

Collected quantitative insights to understand booking habits, frequently used features, and recurring pain points among daily commuters.

Secondary Research

App Review

Play Store & App Store

Analyzed user reviews to validate interview findings

and identify recurring complaints at scale.

Community Forums

Quora & Online Discussions

Explored commuter discussions to understand edge cases, frustrations, and expectations beyond direct research.

User Insights

No clear priority: App felt cluttered, with similar-looking buttons making it unclear where to click.

Too many choices: Users felt overwhelmed by the number of options, buttons.

Payment lacked feedback: Users were unsure if their payment was successful.

No booking memory: Users had to search for the same routes again and again.

Survey Insights

UX Audit

Identifying friction through a UX lens

We also reviewed the app ourselves to understand the design issues behind these user frustrations

Login & Authentication

Toggle didn't look clickable. Button had equal weight, same color with
no clear primary action.

Home Dashboard

No clear hierarchy buttons and status icons looked similar, making it hard to tell what was tappable.

Journey Selection

Layout had accessibility issue, poor hierarchy, unclear labels, and no clear order.

Passenger & Payment

Payment options lacked clear descriptions, making them hard to differentiate and choose.

Ticket Confirmation

Essential travel information wasn't prioritized, reducing clarity after purchase.

Users could tell us where they got stuck the audit told us why?

Defining Commuter's Pain points

Confusing navigation, no clear next step

Repetitive manual entry for frequent routes

Cluttered screens, hard to scan quickly

Unclear payment feedback

Useful features hidden where no one could find them

Ideation

HMW reduce friction from ticket booking flow ?

HMW simplify the booking flow and easy to navigate to?

HMW save people from re-entering the same trip daily?

HMW make payment options clear so users feel confident?

HMW make screens easier to scan, not clutter them?

HMW surface useful features instead of hiding them?

Turning Insights Into Direction

No clear next step →

Repeated route entry →

Screens feel cluttered →

Unclear payment status →

Useful features are hidden→

Making ticket booking primary action with proper navigation

Made the login experience faster and less disruptive.

Added Quick Rebooking and Saved Journeys for one-tap access

Simplified the layout with clear grouping, spacing.

Added a clear Pay Now action and a confirmation screen after payment.

Made settings features more visible and accessible.

Applying Design Principles

Prioritized Hierarchy

Improve accessibility

Building Trust

Reduce cognitive load

Prioritize frequent tasks

Reduce booking time

Solution

Redesigning the Booking Experience

Since ticket booking is the primary function of the UTS app, every design decision
focused on making this journey faster, accessible ,simpler and easier to complete.

Simplifying the Booking Flow

Repetitive Actions
No review before payment
High Cognitive Load
Longer Booking Time
High Decision making process

Eliminated repetitive route
selection
Reduced booking steps
Faster ticket booking

Simplified the booking process
Reduced cognitive load
Clearer task progression
Eliminated repetitive route selection

Users Mentioned "I travel the same route every day, but I still have to
enter everything again booking takes longer than it should."

Reducing repeated actions

→ Introduced Quick Rebooking (Recent Journeys) to make frequent trips faster and reduce steps.

Users Mentioned "There are too many options on the screen. I wasn't sure where to begin"

Bringing Clarity to the Home Screen

→ Made "Book Ticket" the clear, primary action everything else takes a back seat.

→ Grouped fields logically, showed only what's needed at each step.

Users Mentioned "Too many fields, it already picked things for me before I even decided."

Clear Information Hierarchy

→Removed pre-selected defaults so users make an active choice and grouped fields clearly along with ticket summary for confirmation

Users Says "The options all looked the same, I couldn't tell which one to pick."

Simplifying Payment Options

→Separated payment into its own step after journey details.
Grouped options clearly by method instead of cramming in single form

Users Mentioned "The payment process felt unclear and confusing, No feedback
after payment"

Making Payment Feel Trustworthy

→Added clear success/failure feedback after payment, along with ticket details confirming the booking.

Usability Testing

Validating the Redesign

→We tested the new flow with real commuters completing a full booking task, start to finish,
and tracked results using Maze.

Easier to navigate

Less overwhelming

More confidence

Better readability

What Users said:

"This feels much easier than the current app."

"I immediately knew where to click."

"Quick Booking would save me a lot of time."

9 → 4 steps

Reduced booking flow

85.7%

Task Success Rate

67%

Were able to access to language settings

4.2/5 → 4.8/5

Projected rating jump

Key Takeaways

The biggest win was reducing friction in a task users repeat often. Sometimes, good design is simply making existing features easier to find and use.

Future Opportunities

Quick Access to Active Ticket
Participants wanted the active journey ticket to be visible on the home screen, enabling them to quickly present it during ticket inspections without navigating through multiple screens.

Making ticket booking faster, clearer, and less frustrating

Redesigning the UTS ticket booking experience to reduce friction in navigation, login, and ticket generation.

The Challenge

UTS is the Indian Railways app that let people book unreserved train tickets from their phone to avoid standing in a station queue. The project involved identifying usability issues, simplify the booking journey, and redesign key interactions to reduce friction and improve clarity.

Impact

Design Approach

Why We Picked This Up?

We noticed users were dropping off during ticket booking. The process was working, but not working well enough for people to complete it smoothly.

Research

Understanding the Commuter's Journey

We started with conducting primary and secondary research to understand how commuters book tickets, where they face friction, and what prevents a seamless booking experience.

Primary Research

Secondary Research

User Insights

No clear priority: App felt cluttered, with similar-looking buttons making it unclear where to click.

Too many choices: Users felt overwhelmed by the number of options, buttons.

Login added friction: Repeated OTP login was frustrating, especially when in a hurry.

Payment lacked feedback: Users were unsure if their payment was successful.

No booking memory: Users had to search for the same routes again and again.

Survey Insights

UX Audit

Identifying friction through a UX lens

We also reviewed the app ourselves to understand the design issues behind these user frustrations

Login & Authentication

Toggle didn't look clickable. Button had equal weight, same color with no clear primary action.

Home Dashboard

No clear hierarchy buttons and status icons looked similar, making it hard to tell what was tappable.

Journey Selection

Layout had accessibility issue, poor hierarchy, unclear labels, and no clear order.

Passenger & Payment

Payment options lacked clear descriptions, making them hard to differentiate and choose.

Ticket Confirmation

Essential travel information wasn't prioritized, reducing clarity after purchase.

Users could tell us where they got stuck the audit told us why?

Defining Commuter's Pain points

Confusing navigation, no clear next step

Login interrupting every time you open app / book ticket

Repetitive manual entry for frequent routes

Cluttered screens, hard to scan quickly

Unclear payment feedback

Useful features hidden where no one could find them

Ideation

HMW reduce friction from ticket booking flow ?

HMW simplify the booking flow and easy to navigate to?

HMW save people from re-entering the same trip daily?

HMW make payment options clear so users feel confident?

HMW make screens easier to scan, not clutter them?

HMW surface useful features instead of hiding them?

Turning Insights Into Direction

Applying Design Principles

Prioritized Hierarchy

Improve accessibility

Building Trust

Reduce cognitive load

Prioritize frequent tasks

Reduce booking time

Solution

Redesigning the Booking Experience

Since ticket booking is the primary function of the UTS app, every design decision focused on making this journey faster, accessible ,simpler and easier to complete.

Simplifying the Booking Flow

Repetitive Actions

No review before payment

High Cognitive Load

Longer Booking Time

High Decision making process

Eliminated repetitive route selection

Reduced booking steps

Faster ticket booking

Simplified the booking process

Reduced cognitive load

Clearer task progression

Eliminated repetitive route selection

Users Mentioned "I travel the same route every day, but I still have to enter everything again booking takes longer than it should."

Reducing repeated actions

→ Introduced Quick Rebooking (Recent Journeys) to make frequent trips faster and reduce steps.

Users Mentioned "There are too many options on the screen. I wasn't sure where to begin"

Bringing Clarity to the Home Screen

→ Made "Book Ticket" the clear, primary action everything else takes a back seat.

→ Grouped fields logically, showed only what's needed at each step.

Users Mentioned "Too many fields, it already picked things for me before I even decided."

Redesigning the UTS ticket booking experience to
reduce friction in navigation, login, and ticket generation.

We noticed users were dropping off during ticket booking. The process was working, but not
working well enough for people to complete it smoothly.

We started with conducting primary and secondary research to understand how commuters
book tickets, where they face friction, and what prevents a seamless booking experience.

Toggle didn't look clickable. Button had equal weight, same color with
no clear primary action.

Since ticket booking is the primary function of the UTS app, every design decision
focused on making this journey faster, accessible ,simpler and easier to complete.

Eliminated repetitive route
selection

Users Mentioned "I travel the same route every day, but I still have to
enter everything again booking takes longer than it should."

→Separated payment into its own step after journey details.
Grouped options clearly by method instead of cramming in single form

Users Mentioned "The payment process felt unclear and confusing, No feedback
after payment"

→We tested the new flow with real commuters completing a full booking task, start to finish,
and tracked results using Maze.

Quick Access to Active Ticket
Participants wanted the active journey ticket to be visible on the home screen, enabling them to quickly present it during ticket inspections without navigating through multiple screens.