Welcome to MarsAir!

This application has been developed as an exercise for candidates applying for the Quality Assurance and Testing roles at ThoughtWorks. In the same way you wouldn’t hire a musician before hearing some notes, we’d like to see you play a little bit for us. It shouldn’t take very long to finish, and we hope it is an enjoyable and challenging task.

The backstory

MarsAir has established itself as the newest commercial spaceship operator. Founded by a group of genius engineers who left NASA a couple of years ago and growing very rapidly, MarsAir has just hired their first Sales Director, Mark.

Mark did not miss a beat – he put together a team to write their first website. Lacking an online presence when you’re selling any kind of travel these days is unacceptable!

So, since the first release has to get out the door as soon as possible, MarsAir has agreed to not worry about processing credit cards, cross-selling or even doing any kind of content management for now: it’s just trips to the Red Planet, and nothing else.

The UI needs to be attractive, but with no bells and whistles: enough to be able to sell tickets effectively, and that’s about it. It needs to look relatively similar across all commonly used browsers in use today, but doesn’t have to be pixel-perfect.

Basic UI Design

Search (home) page:

Search results page (successful search):

Story list

The stories that follow were implemented by the team in record time. It is now up to you to make sure they did a good job. Go ahead and explore the application. You should see a ‘Report an issue’ link in the top left corner of all pages; if you find any, go ahead and report it.

Here are the stories:

#1 – Basic Search flow

As a MarsAir Sales Director (Mark)
I want potential customers to be able to search for flights to Mars
So that they see what trips are available

Acceptance criteria

• There should be ‘departure’ and ‘return’ fields on a search form.
• Flights leave every six months, in July and December, both ways.
• Trips for the next two years should be searchable.
• If there are seats, display “Seats available! Call 0800 MARSAIR to book!”
• If there are no seats, display “Sorry, there are no more seats available.”

#2 – Promotional Codes

As a MarsAir Sales Director (Mark)
I want to distribute promotional codes to customers
So that they get discounts and are more tempted to purchase tickets

Acceptance criteria

• Promotional codes are in the format XX9-XXX-999.
• Characters are all random.
• The first digit indicates the discount percentage (2 = 20%, 3 = 30% etc).
• The next two digits are random.
• The final digit is a check digit; it is equal to the sum of all other digits modulo 10, eg:
  
  AF3-FJK-41?: 3 + 4 + 1 = 8, so the complete promotional code is AF3-FJK-418
  JJ5-OPQ-32?: 5 + 3 + 2 = 10, so the complete promotional code is JJ5-OPQ-320
  
  
• When a valid code is entered, the search result should have a “Promotional code [code] used: [discount]% discount!” message.
• Otherwise, show “Sorry, code [invalid promo code] is not valid”.

#3 – Link to Home Page

As a MarsAir Sales Director (Mark)
I want potential customers to be able to go back to the flight search from anywhere on the site
So that they are guided towards booking trips

Acceptance criteria

• “Book a ticket to the red planet now!” should apperar somewhere prominent on the page.
• Clicking it takes the user to the home page.
• Clicking the MarsAir logo on the top left should also take the user to the home page.

#4 – Invalid Return Dates

As a MarsAir Sales Director (Mark)
I want to prevent potential customers from searching for invalid trips
So that they don’t waste time, and book valid ones

Acceptance criteria

• “Unfortunately, this schedule is not possible. Please try again.” displayed when return date is less than 1 year from the departure.

Good luck!

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