Future Mobile Vision
Company: Air New Zealand
Role: UX Designer
Kudos: Maria Sauer, Sam Trustum and Josh Ong
2018
An ambitious project
During my time at AirNZ a vision for an improved digital customer experience had been proposed at a high level. This vision had the potential to become the foundation for a future mobile experience. However, it was recognised that merely making incremental improvements will not result in a significant improvement in the mobile customer experience.
Air New Zealand had acknowledged the need to explore a future customer experience that is anchored in key technology edges such as machine learning, conversational UI, and deep personalisation.
My role
The future mobile vision was my first project as a UX Designer at Air New Zealand. I had the chance to collaborate with stakeholders and UX researchers to build an innovative user experience and design language for the new Air NZ app.
I've participated in all stages of the design process, from workshops and usability tests to prototype and visual concepts.
Goal
Explore visions for a step change in the core customer experience, facilitated by a new mobile app exploiting cutting-edge technologies (e.g., conversational interfaces, machine learning and AI, robotics, augmented reality, smart earbuds, et al.).
Propose future state experiences for scenarios built around key customer interaction modes: customer-initiated assistance, proactive assistance, and customer self-service.
Evaluate those visions regarding improved operational and commercial outcomes and satisfaction of priority customer needs.
Process
We conducted workshops to identify areas in Air New Zealand's customer journey and missions that showed potential targets for gathering insights into passengers' pain points around air travel.
We've also conducted intercept interviews with passengers in the Auckland domestic and international terminals. They validated that our ideas would meet their expectations and be desirable when dealing with the pain point they were meant to solve.
Ideas collected from passengers and staff
User testing at Auckland Airport
The workshops and interviews gave us interesting material to work with, allowing us to identify the pain points in the customer journey.
Yet, we recognized the need for the project to be more tangible and relatable. To bridge this gap, we embarked on the creation of concepts and prototypes. This step has been pivotal in validating and, equally importantly, un-validating the myriad ideas and features we had gathered.
Personally, I find the process of crafting and bringing ideas to life to be the most enjoyable aspect of the project.
In order to validate our assumptions and test the insights we gained from the workshops, we developed a prototype to observe how our customers would interact with the experience we were creating. This was a crucial step that enabled us to test different design solutions, iterate rapidly based on the feedback, mitigate risks, and increase the chances of delivering a successful experience.
Contextual trip information
Passengers have varying preferences regarding important information, but there is a consensus about when they want to receive this information.
Collected insights from passenger showed the importance of contextual trip information, improved travel experience with timely and relevant details specific to their journey. This includes real-time flight updates, gate changes, and weather forecasts at their destination.
Trip details, important information, and features available to passengers would change based on the step of their journey.
One of the prototypes we tested during several days
A contextual smart ticket focused only on the information passengers need.
Visual exploration
Visual design
The words customers used and selected for the new design were mostly positive.
The new design is more closely aligned with our brand compared to the current design, which came through in the words that were selected and the comments.
While the current design got positive feedback too, the new design felt like an evolution of the current design:
“It feels like the next generation of the current app.
“It looks very crisp and clean.”
Next steps
We got back to the design table a few times, polishing our concepts to bring our users the best experience based on their feedback. Most users had positive reactions towards the prototypes we tested. Feedback collected included that the app was easy to navigate, the new features and suggestions were more dynamic, making the app more personal while still aligned with Air NZ brand.
After several months of work, it was decided to shift in a different direction and keep improving the current Air NZ app. The last round of research has been conducted to wrap up the design sprint and to understand which aspects of the design are working for our customers and which aspects need further investigation.