Somewhere to Come Back To — cart recovery for flight booking
A cart recovery card for airline booking, built from stage-by-stage drop-off behaviour and the biases behind it — not from persuasion patterns.
Role
Lead designer, end to end
Team
Product · BA · Engineering · Analytics
Scope
iOS · Android · Live Activity
Status
Shipped - Available at Qatar airways app
Half of abandoned bookings come back on their own. We stopped designing a reason to return, and designed the place to return to.
The problem
People start a flight booking and don't finish it.
That's ordinary in e-commerce, but a flight cart isn't a shopping basket. Fares move. Seats sell. A booking left open for six hours isn't the same booking when someone comes back to it — and the longer it sits, the less of it we can still honour.
So the question wasn't how to chase people. It was what to do with something that's still changing while nobody's watching it.
Why people leave
I looked at drop-off by stage rather than in aggregate, because the reasons weren't the same at each one.
✈️ Flight selection — 35% left because the fare didn't suit their budget and they wanted to search different dates or destinations. 20% were comparing fares with other airlines. 15% weren't planning a trip at all yet.
🧑 Passenger details — 29% fare, 21% still comparing, 13% didn't have passenger details to hand, 10% simply ran out of time.
💳 Payment — 30% found the fare had changed. 19% hit a system error or a long load. 10% wanted to pay with Avios instead.
Where people leave, across the booking flow
Two things stood out
Across the whole funnel, around half of all abandonment was about money. And a large share of the rest wasn't abandonment at all — it was interruption. People who didn't have all passenger details in front of them, or who ran out of time, or who were waiting to hear back from the person they were travelling with.
The second group is the interesting one.
Interruption has a well-documented shape, and three effects describe it. Together they told us the intention was already coming back — and where to meet it.
Zeigarnik effect
Unfinished tasks hold a tension that finished ones release, so they stay in mind.
Zeigarnik effect
Unfinished tasks hold a tension that finished ones release, so they stay in mind.
The card
Design image placeholder — recovery card
Why a Live Activity
What shipped
Product image placeholder — shipped experience