I can’t describe most of my project in details, however I am able to write something about my previous one in order to show what I did last year. You will get more information about my experience below.

Problems at airports

Everything which is related to aircrafts, airports and the aviation industry is not up to date with modern technology.

People at airports still communicate with each other by old radios. When I visited a couple of airports, people at the airport would travel across the ramp to give a notification on paper. So for example, if you were a fuel supplier, you would get information about the aircraft’s arrival and departure times and to which gate you should take the fuel to. In some rooms large white boards still exist, where people write by hand how current situation outside the build looks. Without a doubt, it could be the reason, why aircrafts are delayed and passengers have problems with theirs flights.

the most popular question at the airports:

• Is it delayed, or not?
• What happens there?
• What schould I do now?
• Why do delays occure so offen?
• How to avoid delays in the future?

Research

Being on site, I had an opportunity to observe how airport works in detail. Moreover I did a lot of interviews in order to get more information from all future users. Gathering information only from one source could be one of the reasons why products didn't fit the market. When I was gathering information about the processes, I would speak with a couple of industry experts too. What did I get from them? First of all, every airport has their own processes. There are some general rules which tell us how they work, but airports differ in terms of the finer details.

After my research I did user personas and mapped all user stories and most common cases which happens at the ramp. Even if you think that you know everything, life will surprise you. Did you know that some pilots don’t want to work with some ramp agents and airlines have to switch personel as result of these personal wars? After seeing everything with my own eyes and interviewing experts and future users, I have got a really good foundation for creating first Ideas, on how my project should work and what kind of devices to use with it

More things to overthink after airport studing:

• How simple should the application be?
• How to present the data?
• How to handle bad weather?
• Hom many activities schould be mapped?
• How many devices?

Solution

For us as designers, it is very important to deliver value to future users and to stakeholders. Our solution assumed that we would prepare something for replacing current communication channels to modern devices which give us all necessary information about current situation at the ramp. If there were be a delay durning the turnaround, you could use our product as a solution as it would give you a chance to catch up before departure. Everyone who is interested in all data, will get it for further analysis to improve how airline works and for short turnarounds. Before it happens, I had to make some user testing for all devices and validate which approuch is the best to our problem

First thinks which I checked was the app for service provider who could have a smartwach or a mobile. Despite this fact, I had to validate our assumptions of how many options schould be included in our app. After first round of tests we decided to go the simplest path - less is more. People who work at the ramp, have too many things to do on time, and it would be a bad decision to force them to do extra work.

We tested the web application to be as good as the mobile app. It was a challenge to propose a perfect solution for showing processes which are very complex. Every turnaround has many dependencies. It was not obvious which design suit best to all users

Finally, product bacame a success. It is the result of hard work many people who was involved in this project. Tests on future users were a key to success too.