Variety of entertainment options. from Movies, Music, Books and Games

Select from a wide range of new releases and classics

High quality movies accessed on your devices

Have amenities delivered to you or people in your group

Order Food And Drinks and your group.

Taking in-flight service

DELTA

to new heights

Taking in-flight service to new heights

Client: Delta Airlines

The Brief:

Make in-flight services available to passengers on their mobile devices.
In-flight services are manual (food and drink service, summoning an attendant), or limited to the headrest entertainment console.
Design a way for passengers to access these services through the existing Fly Delta app or website.

Must include features:

Passengers can make a request for services or amenities by paging a flight attendant.
Passengers can utilize the built-in entertainment displays to view movies, listen to music, play games, and view flight information.
Passengers can purchase Wi-Fi on their devices.
Passengers can shop duty-free through Delta SkyMiles® Marketplace and Sky Magazine.

The Problem

Passengers would like to request services and amenities but face anxiety in waiting for service and receiving items. Flight attendants would like to meet a passenger's needs in a timely matter, but find it difficult with the many passengers they must serve.

The Solution

Using new in-flight services embedded in the existing mobile app, flyers can contact flight attendants, request amenities, order food and drinks, shop online and enjoy their in-flight entertainment features. Their overall in-flight experience will be upgraded with seamless services and efficient payment, which both satisfy Delta’s business goals and its users needs.

Solution Design Features

Digital experience for amenities, entertainment and shopping

Order for other passengers
Easy digital payment combines with mileage points
Embedded functions for messaging and summoning attendants, flying map, language switch and waking-up

Duration
3 weeks
My Team
4 person team
UX Researcher,
UX Designer,
Content Strategist

My Roles
Lead UX
Research
UI Design
My Responsibilities
Surveys 54 Respondents
International Interviews
Personas
Journey Map
Over looked UI designs
Display UI
VR Design
Usability Tests
Affinity Mapping
Business Model Canvas

Tools
Sketch
InVision
Google Forms
Marker, Paper, pen, Whiteboard
Methods
Survey
Phone Interviews
Usability Tests
Affinity Mapping
Design Studio
LoFi Wireframing
HiFi Wireframing
Content Strategy

DurationIPAD
3 weeks
My Team
4 person team

My Roles
Project Manager
Lead UX / UI Designer
UX Researcher
Content Strategist
Tools
Sketch
InVision
Google Forms
Marker, Paper, pen, Whiteboard

My ResponsibilitiesIPAD
Surveys 54 Respondents
International Interviews
Personas
Journey Map
Over looked UI designs
Display UI
VR Design
Usability Tests
Affinity Mapping
Business Model Canvas
Methods
Survey
Phone Interviews
Usability Tests
Affinity Mapping
Design Studio
LoFi Wireframing
HiFi Wireframing
Content Strategy

DurationPhone
3 weeks
My Team
4 person team
UX Researcher,
UX Designer,
Content Strategist

My RolesPhone
Lead UX
Research
UI Design
My Responsibilities
Surveys 54 Respondents
International Interviews
Personas
Journey Map
Over looked UI designs
Display UI
VR Design
Usability Tests
Affinity Mapping
Business Model Canvas

ToolsPhone
Sketch
InVision
Google Forms
Marker, Paper, pen, Whiteboard
Methods
Survey
Phone Interviews
Usability Tests
Affinity Mapping
Design Studio
LoFi Wireframing
HiFi Wireframing
Content Strategy

Storyboard

_{Here is a storyboard of common user experience on a flight, summarizing some pain points.}

Research

The use case for this solution was straight forward. This would be an app for Delta passengers during a flight. However, to really understand a passenger's need, we needed to dig deeper, so we sought frequent flyers.

From administrating a survey and interviews, I was able to utilized many methods such as creating a charts, affinity mapping, and competitive/comparative analysis to find trends that would helped us in the development of our persona.

54 Survey Respondents
8 Interviews

Competitive Analysis

We wanted to see what features other airlines were providing in their current app.

From our user research, we identified the majority of passengers have mobile devices running either iOS or Android, so we sifted through app descriptions, screenshots, and reviews for apps on both the App Store and the Google Play Store.

For the competitive analysis, we evaluated every feature provided in the apps of four airlines both Pre-Flight and In-Flight and categorized the features that passengers would use in-flight.

Competitive Analysis Chart

Competitive Analysis Notes

User Survey & Interviews

To give us a scope of what the problem was, we conducted a survey with 56 respondents from all over the world, with a main focus in the U.S. to learn more about our users.

We designed a survey with a screener that helped us to focus on those who flew more than 3 times in the past 2 years, on long flights (5+ hours). Below are some questions and answers we received.

Some questions we asked:
How much time do you typically spend on summoning attendants and waiting for your orders?

Tell me about the last time you tried to purchase a product and obtain service in-flight

What are the biggest pains or hardest part to that?

Survey Question Brainstorming

Flyer Survey

Raw Survey Response Data

How often do you fly

Do you use in-fight amenities and services

Our research revealed that nearly 28% of our users fly at least once a month and nearly 8% fly every 2 weeks. So why was it that almost 44% did not use amenities or in-flight services at all? We set out to find this out.

Affinity Mapping

I then conducted 8 follow-up interviews, seeking deeper insights. With the data and grouped into different categories we were able to create an affinity map, to find trends that would helped us in the development of our persona and focus on users primary needs. The three key findings were quality of in-flight service, inflight activities, payments

Some questions we asked:

How much time do you typically spend on summoning attendants and waiting for your orders?
Tell me about the last time you tried to purchase a product and obtain service in-flight?
What are the biggest pains or hardest part related to that?

People were saying:

“When I wanted to have my sleep and I had to be up to take care of these things. Would be great to set a time for delivery.”
“Looking through the items and finding what I actually need.”
“It was a bit annoying. I pressed button for attendants but there was no indication if they got it or not. I was really tired and didn’t want to engage with anyone so was a bit frustrating because I also had to keep looking to see if they were coming and then wait again for them to bring my order.”
“It usually took too long to have my order. Sometimes I didn’t want to talk to anyone after a long day and on a long flight.”

Main Findings

Most important factors to consider:

Focus on comfort

Fast and human-centered service

Convenient & broad selection

Easy payment

Better quality of built-in screen

Free/cheap WIFI

Reasons for preferring to use phone on a plane:

Familiarity of use

Movies, games and music

Convenience

Seamless experience among apps

Affinity Map Findings Full Report

Personas

Now that we have a better understanding of the users' needs based on our research, I profiled 3 personas. They represent the 3 main types of passengers.

By identifying our Primary user persona and two Secondary Personas we had a clearer understanding who we were actually crafting for, which helped us identify the users' needs and a foundation to work from to start designing a delightful experience for them.

Secondary Persona

Special Persona

User Journey Map

Here I drew out Gina's user journey map as she uses the In-Flight App from to her destination. home and going to the airport, at the airport and on flight to her destination.

Impact-effort Matrix

After the design studio, we came up with multiple ideas. In order to prioritize and narrow them down, we used an impact-effort matrix. We would focus more on high impact, low effort areas and less on high effort and low impact areas.

Design Studio

Doing a quick design studio among team members is the best practice to conceiving ideas for new product.

User Testing and A/B Testing

Once we finished prioritizing ideas, I conducted 3 rounds of user testings using paper prototypes to observe the human interaction with the user interfaces. I also conducted A/B testings to help decide which design layouts to focus on.

For the A/B testings, users preferred to use layout A because the interface was simpler and clearer. However, they were confused with the bottom IN-FLIGHT tab among other tabs. Which I then also began iterating.

Video Footage of User Testing

Main Findings

Language symbol is not so clear

Change hamburger symbol into account symbol

Regroup and change 2 lines of bottom tabs into 1 line

Preference to see images and be able to choose fast

Main Findings

Language symbol is not so clear

Change hamburger symbol into account symbol

Regroup and change 2 lines of bottom tabs into 1 line

Preference to see images and be able to choose fast

User Flows

Having decided on the design layout, we started to visualize the user flows. For this sprint, we chose to focus on 3 user flows: requesting amenities, selecting and watching movies, and ordering drinks.

Amenities User Flow

Selecting Movies

Ordering Drinks

Wireframes

I designed initial conceptual wireframes and visuals of the major sections. I regrouped the original bottom tab bar items into PRE-FLIGHT and moved it along with IN-FLIGHT to the header for an improved navigation experience.

Style Guide

Since we were embedding features to the existing app, we followed Delta’s style guide and picked some primary colors and typeface as our main color and typeface to ensure the professional and credible branding of Delta.

Hi-Fi design & Usability Testing

We quickly did hi-fi design and then asked 5 people for usability testings. We tracked their feedback and consolidated it into iterations.

Final Design

Users can choose two ways to log in to check in-flight services: preview or check in. Once they enter, they will see that there are four types of in-flight service: entertainment, food & drinks, amenities and shopping.

Requesting Amenities

Users can tap pictures to choose which amenities to request during the flight. They can choose quantity and select a specific seat number. By default, the seat number is their own seat, but they can change in case they want to deliver to other flight passengers.

Selecting Movies

Under entertainment category, users can select movies, music, e-reading and games. If they select movies, they can filter by genre and see more details about the movie. They can also choose to watch on the built-in screen or on their own device. They can always switch between console and their device during the movie.

Ordering Drinks

If it’s an international flight, the snack menu will be food/meal menu. The snack-only menu is for domestic flights. Under the drinks menu, passengers can select free, alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks. Once they select one, they can choose how they want it to be delivered, quantity and seat number, and pay through the app.

Conclusion

As the lead designer of this team, I learned how to assign tasks, how to manage time and always remembering to lead by example to make the best out of our team collaboration. We managed to synthesize a good amount of data and designed 3 different flows in a style consistent with the original application for smart devices and and Virtual Reality.

To make this product complete, we would need to design a convenient and efficient payment system and do more usability testing. As a moderate flyer myself, I know how much this In-Flight service app would greatly improve flyers experiences.