This is a short explainer film, that informs consumers about how to engage in Skiplagging.
The first user problem I needed to confront was the lack of awareness and understanding for the term Skiplagging. What is this made up term? What does that look like? What does it entail? My first thought was a user would be stuck sitting in a lot of airports, and that would server as a pain point. It would be a disservice to use that as our entry point to a user experiencing Skiplagging. Whereas, a positive interaction would be that this form of transit is a great hack because its cheaper.
Let’s define skiplagging. First step, its when a user books a trip through an app that has 1 or 1+ more connecting flights.
Next step, then the user deliberately does not make their first or second connecting flight, because that was secretly the final destination the user wanted to go to.
Confusing, right? And a mouthful.
I decided the easiest way to convey this is by giving the users a proper visual. Let’s see the planes take off and land in their respective cities, but also let’s see the plane route. Users when booking trips care heavily about the plane routes, they expect that type of visual when booking. Its the same reason planes have maps to follow along on your route while traveling.
We know from skiplagging, that if we want the cheapest flight to from LA to STL, its cheaper to book LA to NYC with a lay over in STL. The best way to show this is to literally show their journey. Seeing the map, simplifies and clarifies the users journey. It shows that with skiplagging the user does not take off at the layover, even though the plane ticket has the expectation the customer would. This is a concise design decision. It shows in a matter of one second the perimeters of the product, while presenting it in a design solution.
This piece was created for The Why on Scripps News. The map I built was using Geolayers. I wanted to spruce up a very official looking map, and make the piece a bit more compelling and flashy without confusing the audience. I decided to open the piece animating a take off and landing to draw in the viewer.