DATE
April - July 2022
Krisway
AppChallenge 2019 -The leading digital innovation challenge for aviation
DATE
Aug 2019
RESPONSIBILITY
User Research
User flow
UI design
Visual design
TOOLS
Adobe XD
Miro
inVison
INTRODUCTION
The competition is an international challenge which is open to both students and professionals, it aims at redefining the travel experience with the world’s leading airline -- Singapore Airline.
Our team is formed by 2 persons who are participating in this challenge, a UX/UI designer and a back-end developer, Rajani Kaparthy. Through our discussions, we think there are potential ideas for “Customer Experience: On-Ground”.
And here are some information about the objectives of the theme:
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To deliver a consistent experience that meets/exceeds the customers’ basic needs
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To deliver the appropriate level of personalization commensurate with the customer segments to delight and raise the day-of-travel experience and generate loyalty
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To simplify and streamline internal processes, procedures, and administration such that airport operations can run in the most cost and/or effort-efficient manner
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To leverage automation and digitalization to reduce costs while not compromising on customer service
Krisway is not only an effective, accurate, smart way to guide the passengers to the onboarding gate but also a new way to explore the airport.
The deck is beautifully designed and we really love the mock ups that the team came up with.
The journey is well illustrated. Next round, you can have more focus on this side of the deck.
- Singapore Airlines AppChallenge 2019 Team
PROJECT GOAL
1/ To deliver the appropriate level of personalization commensurate with the customer segments
2/ To launch Infrastructure-less capabilities to guide passengers through the airport
3/ To simplify and streamline processes through new digital technologies
THREE MAIN
POINTS TO BE
ACHIEVED
1/ To provide easy check-in, check-out and transit procedures
2/ Design a route for the passengers in the airport transit area
3/ Shorten the check-in, check-out and transit time
TARGET USER
Singapore Airline's passenger
RESEARCH
The passengers’ journey with Singapore Airline.
CHECK-IN PROCESS
Upon arriving at the airport, they will proceed to the respective check-in counters differentiated by the class of travel. Due to Singapore Airline’s flight schedules, there are flights which depart concurrently. This may result in long queues at the check-in counters. Passengers will sometimes have to face a longer check-in process.
WANDERING AROUND THE AIRPORT AFTER THE IMMIGRATION AND SECURITY CHECK
After the check-in process, passengers are free to explore the airport before their flight departure. Usually, no later than one hour before the scheduled departure time, they would complete the required immigration and head straight to the departure gate.
Those who decide to explore the transit area would clear immigration and security checks early so that they can enjoy their leisure time either going to the airline lounge or exploring the shopping and restaurants at the airport transit area.
WAIT AT THE BOARDING GATE
Ideally, the passengers must be waiting at the boarding gate and have no later than 30 minutes before the departure.
Once the aircraft has landed at the destination, there will be two separate groups of passengers: one group is going to make their way to the immigration and the baggage claim, while another group is going to continue with their next flight.
BAGGAGE CLAIM FOR THE LEAVING PASSENGER
For those who are heading to make their way to clear immigrations and the baggage claim, the most important concern is whether their baggage safely arrives or not. And soon when they have all the baggage picked up, it will then move to the baggage declare section before arriving the arrival hall.
CONTINUE JOURNEY FOR THE TRANSIT TRAVELLERS
On the other hand, the other group of passengers who have connecting flights to other
destinations will soon begin their next half of the journey. But before that, they will be navigated to the transit area again and make their way to their next departure gate, assuming they have already checked-in. If not, they would have to go to the transfer counter to finish the check-in process. For some of the passengers, depending on the country they are in and/ or the type of ticket they have, they may have to go through the immigration and security check again before their next departure.
ARRIVE AT THE FINAL DESTINATION
Once the passengers arrive at the arrival hall, the main concern will focus on getting out of the airport as quickly and easily as possible. And at the same time, some passengers may face new challenges when they arrive at an unfamiliar airport.
AN ONLINE SURVEY ABOUT PASSENGERS' BEHAVIOUR
In order to achieve a more accurate result, we have done an online survey so as to collect opinions about the thought of the passengers and how they react/ behave in several situations. After analysing the statistic, we have better positioning on our project as well as how we design the product in a customised way.
TO SELECT THE POTENTIAL ON-GROUND PROCESSES THAT COULD BE SHORTENED
According to the airport regulations, some of the processes couldn't be changed or shortened, such as the passport control and the security check, so we picked 4 steps that can be shortened and set assumed situations to our survey.
FIND OUT THE NEEDS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
There are a lot of moments that can make people feel stressed throughout the whole on-ground process, for example, time is running short unexpectedly. But in case there are too many stressful cases, we try to set some typical normal situations for this question and here is the result.
We have set several situations:
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Long check-in time when time is running short
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Finding ways to the boarding when time is running short
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Long baggage claiming time that makes you feel uncertain about the delivery status
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Arrive at a new airport and do not familiar to find the exits
According to the statistic, there are 53% of people feel stressed when they have a long check-in time while time is running short. And the second stressful is finding ways to the boarding gate, which has 33% of people.
Base on the above result, we have figured out an overview of the needs and solutions for the passengers.
POSITIONING THE PROJECT
After we have found the needs of the passengers, we try to discuss which "need" could have the most potential for the competition. As the Singapore Airline is a world-class airline, they have already self-check-in and baggage-drop counters that aim at reducing the check-in time, therefore we decided to position our project to the second need -- To help the passengers find ways towards the boarding gate.
TRY TO DIG DEEPER INTO THE PROBLEMS
As we have decided to focus on the "finding way system", we want to know more about how the passengers behave before getting on board. It is very important to know about what are their thoughts and how they manage their time once they have completed those compulsory check-in processes, therefore we set a question like this:
Based on the result, we can see that there is 29% of people choose to find a restaurant, 26% of people will start finding their way to the boarding way, 17% of people will go shopping and 17% of them will prefer to explore the airport.
We have also asked further about the reasons for the "finding ways" group and most of them said this is for safety's sake as they don't know how long would it takes for the whole journey to the gate and some of them said they have no interest in shopping or eating at the airport as the average spending is expectedly higher than outside.
BEHAVIOUR AND REACTION WHEN FACING SOME SITUATIONS
Besides time management, we are also curious about how they react when they find that the way to the boarding gate is longer than expected.
As expected, most of the people would choose to rush to the boarding gate first and see whether there is time for other activities, which is 45% of people. 33% of people will choose to ask at the information centre/check-in counter for the estimated time and 22% will look for the airport map.
Basically, all the passengers will be given advice och reminders during the check-in process. The airline staff will briefly explain the time and location of the boarding gate. But still, it is the passengers' responsibility to manage the time and to find ways.
For this question, we really concern about there are almost half of the people would choose to skip the commercial area first and try to come back if there is time left, there is so much time-wasting on finding ways. From the business aspect, it would be a loss for them as sometimes people will decide not to go back to shopping or eating anymore.
The new way to get to the
Onboarding Gate.
As today's technology is growing fast, we can now have so many possibilities and alternative ways to improve our experience. As our project is about building a location detection system for the airline, we think of Beacon.
COMBINE WITH
BEACON TECHNOLOGY
Beacon is a small device that could be used through Bluetooth. These small hardware devices incessantly transmit Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals. Bluetooth-enabled smartphones are capable of scanning and displaying these signals.
Beacons could be used on store-fronts, real estate properties, amusement parks, events and other public venues to broadcast contextually-relevant advertisements and notifications.
FLIGHT INFORMATION & THE ROUTE
The front page will show the latest flight information and the detailed route to the onboarding gate.
Moreover, there will be notifications bings when passengers have reached a checkpoint.
In case the time reaching the boarding gate is less than 30 mins, the system will send a notification to remind the passenger to hurry up.
ACTIVITIES / SERVICES NEARBY
Based on our research, "Restaurant" is the most popular option and the second is "Shopping", therefore we place the searching button according to the preference of our passenger users.
There are suggested activities/services before onboarding, such as restaurant, shopping, garden, facility, film, ATM, parking place and hotel.
The app considers also those passengers who have long transit hours or flight-delayed passengers to find entertainment during their long waiting hours and it could up to 5+ hours of activities, such as having a Spa and massage treatment or watching a long movie.
CUSTOMISED SETTING
Users can set the notifications alarm, languages, font size and sound which can suit different age groups and diverse nationalities.
DIFFICULTIES & CHALLENGES
This project is quite challenging as the scale of the project is quite large. It needs to cover four terminals, therefore it needs time to put sensors with authorisation at every spot.
Another point is all checkpoints should be set in an accurate location so that the users can have precise notifications.
Although we have done research on the airport site, there are still a lot of operation/ technical issues that have to be solved, as the traffic at the airport is quite huge. And this has to be solved on-site.
Throughout the whole process, we have learned much about how people behave at the airport and this was so much fun to observe how they react. Although we could not able to enter the final round, it was still an unforgettable experience for us, and because of that, it has raised my interest in continuously exploring more new possibilities for the flight experience.