Case Study 04 — Southwest Airlines

Seat Selection for Southwest Airlines

Client

Southwest Airlines

Role

Design Team Lead

For over 50 years, Southwest ran on open seating — egalitarian, familiar, core to the brand. Ending it wasn't a UI update. It was a fundamental rethink of the experience, rolled out across web and mobile without disrupting an operation this size.

50+

Years of Open Seating

Southwest's first assigned-seating rollout, ever

A new interaction model for millions of returning flyers

Rolled out across web, iOS, and Android at once

Southwest.com redesigned homepage with fare promotion and flight search

Delivered · Southwest.com Homepage

Southwest seat selection screen showing seat tiers, passenger assignment, and seatmap legend

Delivered · Seat Selection — the Feature That Started It All

Approach

Threading a new model through flows people already trusted.

Eleven designers worked the retrofit, four of them from Southwest's internal team. I led the group retrofitting seat selection into mWeb, iOS, and Android — designing for the full matrix of edge cases: lap children, unaccompanied minors, customers of size, companion passes, SWABIZ bookings. Every permutation was organized into a micro-journey and accounted for before a line of code was written. Southwest's identity is built on warmth and simplicity, so the bar wasn't just technical correctness — new workflows had to be efficient without being cold, modern without being unfamiliar.

Design — visual design & interactive prototypes
Strategy — OKR/KPI development & business alignment
Leadership — team lead across mWeb, iOS, and Android
Testing — BAT coordination & bug triage

Southwest digital product guiding principles artifact

Artifact · Digital Product Guiding Principles

"The delicacy of the retrofitting relied on balancing well-known flows thousands of people used daily, while weaving in new experiences without major upheaval."

— from the engagement's working principles

Artifact — Scoping the Work

Nothing fell through the cracks across eleven designers working in parallel.

Before a single screen was designed, the team aligned on a clear breakdown of MVP enhancements and ownership — entry points, bags updates, modify flows, and responsive breakpoints, each assigned by name, myself included. A companion flow matrix carried every micro-journey: lap child, young traveler, unaccompanied minor, customer of size, companion pass, SWABIZ, and more. Leading a team this size still meant owning a direct slice of the work, not just directing it from above.

Southwest MVP enhancements and assignees breakdown

Artifact · MVP Enhancements & Assignees

Southwest project retrofit flow matrix across micro-journeys

Artifact · Retrofit Flow Matrix — Click to Enlarge, It's Dense

Southwest UXD Business Acceptance Testing checklist

Artifact · UXD BAT Checklist

Pressure Testing

When capacity got tight, we picked up testing ourselves.

The internal UX team owned Business Acceptance Testing, confirming the developed product matched design intent, until capacity became a constraint. When coverage started slipping, I picked it up hands-on alongside the team — the same direct-ownership model that had structured the project from the start. Over three intensive weeks we identified and corrected the backlog. Unglamorous work, and exactly the kind that separates a project that ships clean from one that ships and needs damage control.

300+

Bugs Resolved in 3 Weeks

Designers on the Project

Platforms

The Finished Experience

Live across web, iOS, and Android.

A new seat selection model, a modernized booking funnel, and a consistent look and feel that honored the Southwest brand while moving it decisively forward. These are the full, un-cropped pages — scroll inside each frame, or click through for the full-resolution view.

Southwest.com redesigned homepage, full page

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Delivered · Homepage (Web)

Southwest logged-in homepage with trip cards

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Delivered · Logged-In Homepage & Trip Cards

Southwest fare comparison page, full page

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Delivered · Flight Selection & Fare Comparison

Southwest seat selection screen, full page, web

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Delivered · Seat Selection (Web)

Measurement Framework

The engagement ended. The instruments to keep learning didn't leave.

To make sure the redesign delivered value beyond launch, I partnered with analytics, operations, and customer insights to build a measurement framework across four areas: conversion and engagement tracking through the booking funnel, post-booking NPS at the moment of highest intent, operational signals like boarding time and agent intervention, and continuous-improvement tooling — A/B testing, heatmaps, support ticket tagging — so the product team could keep iterating after we left.

"These strategies should empower Southwest to monitor and optimize the new seat selection experience post-engagement, ensuring the redesign is positioned to deliver measurable improvements aligned with key business objectives."

— from the measurement framework handoff

A Note on Reception

A good design can make a hard change clearer. It can't make it wanted.

Ending open seating was unpopular with a lot of Southwest's customers, and the rollout has drawn real criticism — some about the feel of the change, some about the new fare tiers. Both are fair. The decision to end open seating and restructure fares wasn't ours to make; it responded to pressures that predated our engagement. Our job was to design the experience customers would actually use once that decision had been made.

That distinction matters, but it isn't a place to hide. What we could control, we controlled well: the flow works across web, iOS, and Android, it handles the full matrix of edge cases on day one, and the BAT work closed the backlog before launch. What I'd do differently — push harder, earlier, for qualitative research with the customers most likely to feel the loss. Not to change the business decision. To shape how it was communicated, and to catch the edges of the experience where sentiment would fray. That part is mine to own.

Outcome

The new model shipped, for a company that had run one way for fifty years.

The redesigned experience went live across web, iOS, and Android — a new seat selection model, a modernized booking funnel, and a measurement framework the product team is still using to keep improving. The design principles the team established became part of the shared language used to make decisions long after the engagement ended.

300+

Bugs Resolved in 3 Weeks

Designers, One Retrofit

Platforms, Launched Together

Seat Selection for Southwest Airlines

Threading a new model through flows people already trusted.

Nothing fell through the cracks across eleven designers working in parallel.

When capacity got tight, we picked up testing ourselves.

Live across web, iOS, and Android.

The engagement ended. The instruments to keep learning didn't leave.

A good design can make a hard change clearer. It can't make it wanted.

The new model shipped, for a company that had run one way for fifty years.

05 — naviHealth