Discovering the experience of flight travelers in connections.
By: Andrea Moreno
Tags: Case Study, Research, Service Design

The Challenge

This research is triggered by the necessity of understanding the experience passengers were having during their flights with connections.

The product team aims to digitize this process (to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction), but before they develop the solution, they need to understand how the context will shape the behavior of people.

🕵🏼‍♀️ We wondered…

Do passengers connect to wifi during their shift from one flight to another? Do they interact with their phones?

Who is the person that manages this process? How are the main problems the aircraft is experiencing? How the airport infrastructure is shaping the process?

The initiative is looking to reduce the number of compensations produced for two main reasons:

The passenger not having the important information to experience the journey smoothly. (and ends losing the flight)

Flight delays that could end in a lost flight if the process is not well understood by the passenger (time is the main asset to airport processes)

So, does a digital solution fit with the passenger journey?

The process

Step 01: Understanding the problem

The primary activity is to understand what is happening and how is this problem impacting the airline. We did desk research (supported by the business expert inside the company) which allowed us to understand the numbers associated with this problem: How much money is the company losing? How many passengers are being affected? Does this happen with more incidence in some airports?

Knowing this, alloweds us to understand de KPI’s that this initiative is looking to impact, and focalize research goals and activities.

Like a sponge 🛀🏻

In this step, my role was to soak all the information according to the problem. The skill developed was fast data processing and curiosity. Asking everything, to manage (at a certain level) the technical information of the context. Especially to communicate findings and ask the right questions to all audiences and stakeholders.

Step 02: Framing hypothesis and documenting relevant information

The documentation format was a Customer Journey As-is, built with the perspective of the main actors inside the company.

This process was fast and nothing glamorous. I used g-sheets to gather the stages, actions, and touchpoints during the experience.

That frame allows us to identify the hypothesis and assumptions that we need to inquire about. And this is the starting point to choose the right research method according to the answer we need to find.

Step 03: Finding the right research method

Once we have the main goals and hypothesis of this research, it is time to make the plan. (activities, resources, timeframes a.k.a land the dream 🧝🏼‍♀️)

⚠️ Before in-field research, the most important thing is aligning the team.

In-field research requires the commitment and motivation of all involved. It is not a single person party. That’s why the researcher needs to generate traction. This can be made by involving the main stakeholders from the very first moment. Co-creating the goals and defining the activities.

💁🏻‍♀️ We need the whole team to put on the “ We believe in research” shirt.

If there is anything that my researcher soul enjoys is having the opportunity to execute in-field research. Is it more insightful, It is all behavior observation. (so beautiful😍)

Step 04: Fine and tune research activities

In-field research requires preparation, at least 80% of the activities were properly orchestrated, which means, that we had to create in advance worksheets for document observation, interview scripts, and role definition. (the other 20% is for spontaneity and improvisation)

Step 05: Time for doing the research

During the in-field research, we developed participant and non-participant observation to understand the real user’s behavior. And we complement with guerrilla interviews with passengers and the aircraft.

Some learnings:

Observation scripts are necessary in order to have clarity about what we need to observe . Having similar parameters allows us to compare observations and find patterns.

. Having similar parameters allows us to compare observations and find patterns. In-field interviews must be short, with a maximum of 2 or 3 questions.

with a maximum of 2 or 3 questions. Agile Note-taking: we could not record the conversations because of privacy and legal terms. So we must take concrete, legible and understandable notes to simplify our future analysis .

. In-field research requires many hours of standing. So, a non-comfortable pair of shoes could actually affect your research.

A glance of analysis “in-situ”

After every research activity, we took a few minutes to talk about the main findings. For doing that, we used 3 principal questions.

Which things occurred the same way we imagined?

Was something surprising?

There was something interesting to share?

#fail 💩: my idea was to document all observations at the end of the day, but the pace of the activities didn't allow it. That is why this “debrief in-situ” was a nice way to consolidate right away some of the learnings.

Step 06: The systematization of qualitative data gathering

Document in a spreadsheet works for me. Because it allows me to categorize information by themes and quickly find patterns and nuggets of information.

Also, the spreadsheet allows us to summarize in numbers some of the findings. Because sometimes this is the language different stakeholders are used to, and it’s a great way to connect and give relevance to some of the information. For example, “10 of every 50 persons arrives in the connection hall with their cell phones in hand”

Also, it’s very important to document only relevant things. During In-field research we can find millions of insights, but as researchers, we must communicate assertively so the design team can use these insights to create.

The Impact

This research allows the development and design team to focus on the main challenges they need to address first.

It was the cornerstone of an ideation session with the entire cell

It nurtures the vision of the product and the development of a design backlog

Also, the main findings were co-created with the product owner, UX designer, and business expert. This allows the team to appropriate the results and empathize with the real context of the solution, in order to make better decisions based on data.

We create a customer journey that has the top information a passenger needs in every step of the connections journey, in order to reduce uncertainty and improve their experience. (in regular connections and when a flight is affected and the connection might be altered) This information was the main input for the team to design notification and messaging journeys.

Wrapping up

This case was a great experience to put into practice the strategic and orchestrator role of the service designer or researcher leading.

I learn that the researcher is not the only one who can find insights. Our role is to be the facilitator, the bridge that ensures that observations get to the right eyes in order to make the research have a bigger impact on the overall product strategy. ✌🏼