‘Next generation check-in’ experience from Qantas
By: Dan Hill
Tags: Travel, User Experience, Airports, Service Design, Airlines

That the touch check-in poles have only worked for me half the time so far — as in, managed to retrieve by booking — is clearly an issue, but I suspect this is to do with wider service integration aspects (I imagine it’s to do with the particular way flights are booked through our firm’s travel agency.) This doesn’t excuse it, and may not be particularly straightforward to fix — and also indicates that the service design aspects of systems are perhaps the most important, well beyond local interaction design issues. But being an integration problem it might only require a few lines of code. The issue would be knowing whose code, or work practices, needs altering.

(Essentially outside of this physical experience, Qantas have a video explaining their ‘next-generation check-in’ experience in detail. I was fortunate enough to be speaking with Crumpler’s Sam Davy at State of Design this last year, who recounted his previous work at Apple leading their web experience, and I won’t forget Sam’s quietly brilliant explanation of their video work preparing prospective users for the iPhone. It’s a very smart strategy — essentially making compelling instructional videos which meant that users already knew how to swipe, tap and pinch their way through the iPhone user interface, even before it had launched. This also meant that said users become fully-primed instant advocates for the device once it had launched. The Qantas videos are nothing on this.)

Spatially, there’s a different configuration too. The following diagrams are from memory, and impressionistic, in that it’s how the spaces feel to a frequent user — as opposed to any more ‘official’ drawing.

Fig. 1 indicates the traditional set-up, of a row of staffed check-in desks behind rows of self-check-in kiosks, with much mandatory queuing if you have bags to check. It’s a very ordered space, though defined by those temporary configurable gates and channels familiar to sporting events, social security offices, and sheep dips.

Fig. 2 now indicates the first wave of check-in poles for frequent flyers, flanked by a different ‘geese in flying V’ formation for new check-in kiosks, with fewer, smaller check-in desks at the back. Checking in luggage is now done by passengers themselves too, using automated bag drops at more large kiosks which include conveyor belts with weighing scales to the right, on the way towards security. People were approaching these larger kiosks tentatively, that’s for sure.

Qantas staff are wandering around, on-call, helping people through these processes. There seem to be fewer staff involved in the new system. That’s how it feels anyway. While there’s an obvious cost saving to Qantas there, if the system works as it should, it would feel a quicker process with greater individual agency, genuinely necessitating fewer staff. Personally, however, I’d like to see the same staffing levels maintained, as a human ‘membrane’ around the technology, with any cost savings ploughed into training and salary in order to engender further personality, advanced help, and the true responsiveness of the well-trained and motivated worker.