AirNav
Developed airport wayfinding app to reduce missed flights, featuring streamlined navigation, iterative testing, and monetization strategies.
Challenge
Large airports with numerous boarding gates offer a particularly harrowing experience to flyers, especially those running late.
Solution
AirNav aims to solve the digital wayfinding aid gap nailing the most critical pain points of flyers who find it harrowsome to their boarding gates.
UX Research, Prototyping, User Testing
3 months
Figma, Balsamiq, User Testing, StoryboardThat
Tools Used
Duration
Responsibilities
Design Process
The design process involved the main pillars of design thinking and product development.
Empathize -> Define -> Ideate -> Prototype -> Test -> Iterate
User Flow > Storyboard > Sitemap > Key Features > Lofi & Hifi prototypes > Highlight Reel > User Testing > Design Progression > Internationalization
The project covers design thinking in the following artefacts:
Empathize
Old Vs New User Flow
The existing booking-to-boarding process looks efficient, only seemingly. But much is to be done to make it user-friendly. Making the traveler's journey within the airport seamless would be a particularly important step to improve their experience close to their boarding call.
Highlighted in red is the path a traveler takes in the airport with some problems unaddressed.
The ideal user flow is imagined to look as highlighted in green.
Empathize
Storyboard
Imagine you're a master's student on your very first international trip...
Define
Challenges Observed from Problem Research
The pain points that found common ground in the informal interviews.
- Complex airport layout
- Language barriers during international trips
- Lack of real-time information
- Last-minute gate changes
- Information overload in airport signage
- Not knowing how much time is left to board the gate
Define
Information Architecture
Ideate
Lo-Fi Wireframe
Sign Up & Onboarding
Entering boarding pass information
Adding a stop
Profile
History
Key Features
Throughout the research process, I brainstormed features that add value to the app. These features pay attention to solving pain points to also going one step further in heeding the business needs like store partnerships (Ads), and external-app permissions (Wallet).
Test
User Testing
I formulated screener questions to pick ideal users. I further included non-leading questions and tasks to gain feedback.
Screener questions
Testing questions
Prototype
Hi-Fi Prototype: An Iterative Process
The prototype lost some features and gained new features as the testing continued.
Feel free to test the app interface here:)
Highlight Reel
I performed user testing on AirNav with carefully chosen target users. The testing reported an NPS score of 63.
Here are the formative moments from the testing with significant insights for improvement.
What Worked
- 3/3 users appreciated the core concept of airport navigation
- 2/3 users reported that the journey visualization from airport entry to gate was easy
- After iteration: The share trip and search bar features were appreciated
- 1/3 users noticed the differentiation between terminal and store routes and reported it to be clear and digestible due to solid and dotted lines
- Ease of finding destinations and the app's potential to reduce missed flights was recognized by 3/3 users
What Did Not Work
- 1/2 users could not proceed to the maps page in the way intended
- User interface and design received low ratings (1.5/5 average)
- Some users had difficulty understanding page flow, particularly between scan and location pages
- 2/3 users didn't explore the landing page scan buttons
- 2/3 users didn’t explore the wallet pages
- 3/3 users didn’t click on the store pages
- Ads need to be smaller to avoid confusion with destinations
- 1/3 users reported that the navigation structure needs improvement
- Lack of clarity in the itinerary and world map buttons
- 1/3 users found the multiple options for scanning the boarding pass redundant - hinting at weak conformity of Hicks Law
Recommendations
- Redesign of the navigation curser UI element, reordering of the secondary buttons on maps mode
- Clarify the flow between scan and location pages
- Introduce a home button - replace scan with home icon
- Make ads smaller and visually distinct from navigation elements
- Remove images from the cards on the history page
- Might need to introduce a brief onboarding tutorial to help users understand key features quickly
- Conduct user research to identify best-performing UI elements to enable user exploration of the app to its entirety
Iterate
Design Progression
The user testing shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of the features and the design process. The recommendations from user testing were naturally taken to heart and revisions were made to the prototype.
Lo-Fidelity
Hi-Fidelity
Revised
how the design started...
...progressed...
and stands as now
Lack of a home icon made the screen
look like it was missing something
Fixed the visual anomaly
to align with popular design sense
The navigation symbol, and
other buttons were confusing
The navigation symbol-facing and
wold view button were changed
The history page was looking image-heavy
Created cards that have a
text-to-image ratio of a near 1:1
Idea non-existent
Further brainstorming resulted in
showing a need for monetization
for the app to be profitable
Ads were redesigned to be
non-intrusive, small yet distinct
No User Left Behind: Conforming to Internationalization
While the iPhone's system language settings are spectacular in translating app text, the internationalization of AirNav content felt like an essential process in adapting AirNav to every culture and country to make air travel seamless.
Right To Left Screen via Arabic
Left To Right Screen via German
Takeaways
A work in progress, this project taught me about the importance of validating the strength of a problem, storyboarding as a means for empathizing with internal (and external) stakeholders, user testing, and integrating feedback from real users via testing.
Insights from user testing helped drive the development of AirNav in the right direction.
The learnings affirmed that the best design is always one that is straightforward.
AirNav has so much potential as a digital product and the design will undergo iterations and include improvements over time.