AirPorter
Helping Travelers Fly Smarter, Not Harder
Designing an IoT system that creates a unified user experience to help travelers successfully navigate airports and make it to their flights on time
person
role
UX Researcher & Designer
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timeline
4 Months (Jan. - Apr. 2024)
work
skills
UX Research, UX Design, IoT Design, Prototyping, Storytelling
group
team
5 UX Researchers & Designers
brush
tools
Figjam, Qualtrics, Photon Kit, Figma
overview
As part of our Pervasive Interaction Design course (SI 612), we worked in groups to design an IoT solution that tackled an area with opportunities for improvement using ubiquitous computing. Our group decided to improve the airport experience, specifically the frustration and stress travelers experience while at the airport.
Our final solution is a network of beacons and accompanying mobile application that aims to:
Help travelers manage their time
Provide flexible in-airport navigation options
Consolidate the fragmented flying experience
As a UX Researcher and Designer, I worked with our team to conduct user research and draw insights that informed our final product. I also led the design of both our beacon and mobile app prototypes, which we ultimately used to present in a final demo.
why AirPorter?
background
Airports are often a source of stress and anxiety for many travelers, and rightfully so. From long security lines to constant flight delays to lost baggage, people often have had negative experiences at airports. Ask anyone, and they're probably ready with their most recent airport horror story.
We believed IoT solutions could improve the airport experience, but first we needed to confirm if these problems were prevalent and suitable for such IoT designs.
A busy airport (Image Credit: Connor Danylenko on Pexels)
contextual inquiry
We began our research by conducting contextual inquiry with 5 participants who had recently traveled through an airport. Our goals were to identify key problems that were addressable with IoT solutions, as well as to understand which types of travelers we should target in future research. Our main insight was that:
Travel Needs May Vary, But Clear Information is Key
Frequent flyers prioritize getting timely information to manage potential delays. International travelers face language barriers that impact how they navigate the airport. Nervous travelers struggle with the unfamiliarity and over-stimulation of the airport environment.
Many factors could contribute to a traveler's stress and anxiety levels, potentially leading them to miss an important announcement or not catch their flight. However, regardless of travel experience, clear and timely information is essential for a smooth travel experience
cultural probe & survey
While the contextual inquiry provided a good starting point for brainstorming, we needed more user insights. Thus, we conducted cultural probes and surveys to help us identify diverse traveler needs and pinpoint our target audience.
Cultural Probe
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Qualitative data to understand travelers' behaviors, emotions, and values regarding airports
group
14 participants of digital and physical cultural probes
Survey
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Quantitative data to understand travelers' experiences and pain points in airports
group
120 responses to Qualtrics survey
key insights
We initially thought that different types of travelers experience different problems, so we'd have to narrow our audience to 1 specific type of traveler. However, our research showed that regardless of travel experience, most participants experience stress at the airport due to navigation difficulties and lack of real-time updates. This informed our decision to broaden our target audience to include all airport travelers.
Participants face many challenges in an airport, and often times, if participants are traveling in a group, they cope with the stress of these challenges by shifting responsibilities onto others. This supports the possibility for our solution to lessen the impact of these challenges by acting as a travel-buddy for travelers, helping them navigate, manage their time, and stay up-to-date on announcements.
Travelers have a collection of apps and products they use while in an airport, each with a different purpose. This fragmented system of information overwhelms travelers and increases the likelihood of overlooking an important piece of information, so there's opportunity for our solution to create a more streamlined, cohesive user experience for travelers.
beginnings of AirPorter
target audience
Our research led us to focus on tech-savvy travelers who would benefit from precise and timely flight updates, schedule reminders, and airport navigation assistance. These include:
Travelers who fly infrequently and are unfamiliar with airports
Travelers who are running late and need immediate and accurate information
Travelers who find comfort in planning ahead
possible solutions
We decided that our IoT solution would focus on real-time updates, time-management, and navigation assistance since these areas can be significantly improved through the implementation of an IoT system. The following ideas were considered based on feedback from our research:
Real-Time Airport Status
Collect and display accurate information about the wait times for check-in, TSA, and immigration, along with flight updates using beacons, GPS, and/or BLE technologies
Personalized Airport Assistant
Provide time management suggestions based on estimated wait times at various stages, as well as the overall travel time between different parts of the airport
Autonomous Airport Transport
Accelerate travel within the airport for anxious and late travelers using robots and/or self-driving vehicles within the airport
design requirements & constraints
We also considered the following design requirements and constraints when ideating and prototyping different IoT solutions:
Infrastructure Compatibility
Our IoT system should use technologies that are compatible with existing airport infrastructure and federal regulations
Cohesive User Experience
Our solution should provide all the info users need in one place, eliminating the need to juggle multiple apps and products
Scalability
Our solution should be scalable to accommodate future growth, along with implementation across different airports
Offline Functionality
Our solution should still provide access to basic info in situations where Wi-Fi access is unreliable
Data & Privacy
Our solution needs to ensure the security of users' travel information
testing AirPorter
storyboarding
We created various storyboards to map out how different solutions might help users in different scenarios
user enactments
We developed a Speed Dating Matrix we we were ideating different solutions to test their viability. Specifically, we were interested in users' comfort with different levels of automation.
Some solutions included smart robots, driverless cars, and beacons and NFC integrations with users' existing devices. Using the Speed Dating Matrix, we categorized key scenarios based on different interaction and intensity levels, and scripted user enactments to test our concepts with potential users.
key insights
Travelers Want Control over Their Decisions
Users prefer having information and assistance in executing their decisions rather than having decisions automatically made for them. If possible, users prefer having information the day before they're supposed to be at the airport so that they can plan ahead and prepare themselves.
Travelers Are Willing to Pay for Convenience
Users value features that offer them a sense of privilege and control within the airport, even if these features come at an additional cost, because they perceive their flight as being more important. When users do pay for a feature, payment should only be processed after the service has been provided so that users are certain that they got what they paid for, preventing financial loss and confusion.
Manage Travelers' Expectations
It's important to manage expectations by informing users that the IoT system cannot change airport operations (e.g. flight delays, security lines). When not enough data is available to provide accurate information and estimates, users should be notified so that they can plan accordingly.
Take Airport Congestion into Consideration
While smart robots are an exciting solution to explore, they'd likely make the already congested airport environment even worse. Instead, our IoT solution should prioritize not contributing to the crowded and overwhelming airport experience for both users and the surrounding travelers.
iterate, iterate, and iterate
status notification
Low Fidelity
High Fidelity
dashboard
Low Fidelity
High Fidelity
status page
Low Fidelity
High Fidelity
introducing AirPorter
product video
key features
Stay Up to Date, All in One Place
Users receive real-time visual and audio notifications about flight statuses, gate changes, security wait times, and more.
This ensures travelers are always equipped with the information needed to make informed decisions, creating a smooth and cohesive travel experience
Navigate with Ease
Users can access the intuitive navigation system on their phone.
The system uses the user's GPS to pinpoint their location within the airport, helping them navigate to terminals, gates, amenities, and services with ease.
Manage your Time
By connecting to the system of beacons and the airport's Wi-Fi network, users have access to personalized recommendations and alerts.
Recommendations and alerts are based on the user's location, helping them stay on schedule and efficiently navigate through the airport.
Skip the Lines, Save Time
Users can expedite their journey through the airport with Fast Pass and Smart Car integrations.
In situations where time is of the essence, users can pay for Fast Pass to quickly go through security checkpoints, avoiding lines.
Smart Cars are available to transport users directly to their gates after the security checkpoints. With connectivity to the gate agents, Smart Cars can alert staff about users' statuses and imminent arrival.
challenges & learnings
test early and often
While our group identified many potential areas for improvement within airports, we weren't confident about the direction we should take until we conducted more user research and testing. After we narrowed down on the problem, we also weren't sure of what elements of our IoT system should be made of. We needed to test multiple solutions to figure out which solutions best addressed user needs, as well as which types of technologies existed within users' comfort zones.
lo-fi prototypes are your best friend
Since the product we were developing was an entire IoT system, it involved a lot of moving components interacting with each other. Verbally explaining our ideas was too confusing, and creating hi-fidelity prototypes would be too time consuming; lo-fidelity prototypes were our most useful tool. Lo-fidelity prototypes provided just enough context to make it easy to visualize how different ideas might be implemented while not being too time-consuming to create.