by The EnvisionaryWhat are the biggest pain points in your air travel experience when going from origin to destination? Our research led to the boarding gate experience.
Client: Flyight Experience Location: New Zealand Challenge: To improve the experience for travelers waiting for their flight
The Background
The client was working with Air New Zealand who wanted to improve their overall user experience flow through the airport, so customers would remember them for their dedicated experience from ordering a ticket to the flight journey to the aftersales care.
I was brought in to work with a team to help with a particular part of the flight day journey. The airline was like many other airlines, seeking to improve their user’s experience and they were following standard practices such as ensuring the customers had sufficient legroom, comfortable reclining seats, and entertainment screens on the back of the seat in front of them.
Most of the onboard flight experience received decent reviews and the airline had somewhat of a monopoly over airlines in that region anyway, but the airline had a couple of specific issues.
Firstly, long haul flights were generally tiring for people who often had to make connecting flights as part of their long journey, and transfer times left passengers often in a time-zone limbo (the kind of half-awake state where you are trying to keep awake whilst adjusting to time zone changes frequently).
It’s arguably the worst part of long-haul flights, the wait in between flights, so we seeked to find solutions for this.
Whilst we couldn’t have any control in making flight times or wait times any shorter, we could seek ways to make it a more comfortable transition for the passengers.
Research led into following a focus group of travelers on their journey so we could pinpoint their emotional trigger changes, as well as the main touchpoints and pain points of their journey.
Of course, no one wants to be waiting around for flights, especially when jet-lagged, and whilst people find their own entertainment we realised a common trend in following the focus groups’ individual and documented journeys.
The transfer wait in between, when waiting at gates, was their hardest. Often many stores were closed on night flights and people had to just wait around with little food and not much to do.
this part of the experience was noted as being the most miserable, as well as the hardest to stay awake. And because they couldn’t fall asleep, at risk of missing their flight, they felt they had to keep going. This made their travel experience more miserable and they could be cranky on their next leg of the journey, no matter how good the service or onboard flight experience was.
If they were to rate their overall experience throughout their journey then most focus group members found that they would give the first leg a much higher score than the second leg, regardless of whether the onboard experience was better or not.
Simply put, when we are tired we get cranky and our actions follow suit.
The Solution/s
So, what could we do?
Many ideas were presented from offering an airline-branded vending machine at every gate to keep people awake or in higher energy as they waited (too expensive), to falling back to improving the onboard experience further to remove any potential pain points that could set off emotional triggers.
These included ideas around the person’s seat area – touch screens that were less ‘touchy’ so you didn’t shake the person’s head in front of you, smarter cushions that would attach onto the seat angle better, and so on.
Yet, these wouldn’t really solve the main pain point on their journey, the transfer and wait times.
Then I thought about the documented videos a bit, and it seemed that what gave the focus group the will to keep going, to keep documenting, was the very documenting of the journey itself.
I thought about whether there was a way that could allow travelers to document their journey whilst they waited in the gate or lounge. This is a time where people have time, whether they like it or not, and if they can’t really sleep, then it’s a case of keeping the mind occupied, and the mind looking forward, even energised.
The documentation vlogs seemed to give them that energy, so we went about creating a prototype that would test a public ‘journey booth’ where people could go into the airline-branded booth and record a little video of their journey, their trip, either where they had been or where they were going.
It took some trial and error to see what kind of things people would want to talk about, but then we also thought about what people would want to hear. We imagined other passengers being able to share and document journeys together, and this iterated into a useful ‘word-of-mouth’ tool.
What if the booth (a bit like a passport photo booth that records videos) could then relay those recording (if the creator said it was okay) to the onboard entertainment on planes?
Now people could not just document their trip, but be useful knowledge and inspiration to others going on trips to where they have been. Also, it would become a very useful suggestion insight tool into learning about a place you are going to before you get there, so travelers could be suggested activities and local hangouts (as locals could also do it when going back to their own country) to do when they get there.
You might be thinking, ‘why a booth, why not just our phones’, and we realised this. Our research found that creating a dedicated booth in the waiting area of a boarding gate created much more buzz than if we just created a poster or ad to make people aware that they could also just use their phones. The booth was like a private vlogging area where people felt they could be themselves more away from many others waiting at the gate.
The Outcome
We tried the idea and created a prototype booth that ‘user testers’ could experience. We also placed a ‘dummy’ booth in a real airport lounge gate and the booth created interest.
The user testing feedback suggested that the booth seemed fun, interactive, and different.
We discovered that the branding opportunity could be reached out much further with booths decorated around the destination’s top attractions or cultural aspects (like the London telephone box).
We then trialed the onboard experience where people could listen to suggestions by previous flyers about the destination they were going to. Being able to search and listen (through headphones) to other people’s destination recommendations also gave people a different alternative to the usual onboard magazines, which were almost always directed at the high-cost luxury that most people in economy seats (the majority of a plane) wouldn’t be able to afford or even be interested in.
It gave them real, raw, local insight, so we then also created a hashtag campaign of #goreal (a play on showreels for real raw footage experiences, and to signify the active element of seeking new places and attractions in the upcoming destination their flight is heading to based on other flyers experiences).
The feedback was generally good, with people thinking it was more personable and social, a different option to the polished beautiful images of a destination on the entertainment screens.
There were a few tweaks needed, but then Covid struck just as this was potentially going to be rolled out, and it was scrapped (for now).
Therefore, I can only talk about the case study rather than share the final outcome (watch this space though as VR was also mooted as a possible future experience in this area).
A CASE STUDY FROM:
