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WFL Time Flies

A mobile app for travelers to plan and organize all flight-related information in a single cohesive experience. It also integrats with physical touch points inside an airport.

My Role

As a Product Design consultant, I worked with the VP of Product Strategy and two UX designers at Westfield Labs. We enlisted Magid Inc. for ethnographic studies of our target audience. Together we researched pain points in a traveler's journey and designed a mobile app and physical touch points inside an airport. I was mainly responsible for the mobile app experiences and the overall design direction for all the platforms.

01.

Home to Arrival — Traveller's Journey

We designed various use-cases for different types of travellers Here is a walkthrough of the 'Optimized Traveller' use-case. This traveler unlike others has no time to explore and wants to find the optimal path to his flight. Let's follow him step by step:

1
1

Owen is at home; he decides to set up his flight by emailing his itinerary to the app. Using the app he purchases breakfast and schedules its delivery to the departure gate.

2
2

Driving to the airport, he has access to real-time traffic, parking lot availability, shuttle departure times and the waiting period at the security.

3
3

In the pre-security waiting line in, he'll have access to his boarding pass and an estimate to how long it'll take him to go through security.

4
4

Post-security or inside airport, Owen can quickly find his gate with the help of a turn by turn wayfinding feature. And also have access to the entire airport directory.

5
5

Owen just arrived at his gate. He is welcomed by the breakfast delivery he initiated at home earlier that day.

6
6

On the plane, Owen realizes he forgot his headphones. So he purchases a pair through the app and has it delivered to his arrival gate.

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7

As Owen walks out of the plan at his destination, he scans his receipt at the stand right outside of the gate and grabs his headphones.

02.

Flight Day

A traveler's frustrations arise from the unknown. How early do I need to be at the airport? How is the traffic to the airport? How long is the wait at security? The flight day app experience brings real-time data from the airport to address these concerns.

  • Main Homescreen
  • Flight Day I
  • Flight Day II
  • Flight Day III
03.

Airport Shopping

Often travelers can't find what they're looking for, or the right deals for shopping go unnoticed. Embedding the e-commerce platform in the app enables travelers to discover dining or shopping experiences and have them delivered to their gates. It also allows airports to create contextual deals or bundles.

  • Shop & Dine
  • Product Page
  • Shopping Cart
  • Purchase Reciept
04.

Process and Research

I started by clearly understanding the problems and defining clear goals for the project. Next, I researched the trendscape and the competitive landscape for travellers. Then we started our user research which helped us identify the user personas and their unique needs. Using all that information I developed a traveler's journey map followed by a brainstorming session on which features to build.
All of this enabled me to develop the information architecture of the app. I also designed a brand guideline to keep the app experience consistent with the physical tablet experience inside the airports. The final stages consisted of prototyping, feedback sessions and iterating on the solution. Here are few examples:
  • User Persona I
  • User Persona II
  • Journey Mapping
  • Mobile Userflow

Conclusion

Our product proposal was well-received by the Westfield Labs executive team and approved to be adopted in the next development cycle. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts massive growth in air travel: 4 billion more people will be flying annually by 2036. This growth creates a competitive platform for additional technological innovations, encouraging airports and airlines to develop human-centered experiences for all the inconvenient steps in a traveler's journey.

Learnings

This was an excellent opportunity to learn about traveler psychology and airport wants/needs from technology to leasing agreements. In hindsight, we should've user tested additional use-cases to better identify the essential features, and allocated more time for streamlining the current flight-day flow. It would've also helped our final proposal if we kept an executive stakeholder in the loop during the conceptualizing phase of the project.

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