The boarding of the future

Appy2Help is an app by KLM / Air France that enables ground staff help the passengers at the airport and that now supports the different phases of the boarding operations.

Goal

After the successful launch of the digital boarding pass scan, KLM wanted to implement the whole boarding process via its app Appy2Help.
Starting from the outcome of a design sprint, I had to design a solution to support our staff in all the boarding operations.

Business goals

On-time performance

Efficiency

Ancillary revenue

Customer loyalty and satisfaction

Main challenges

Dealing with a complex process involving several different roles

Technical contraints due to an API migration

Unexpected budget cuts and redefinition of the scope

The process

Research

Objectives

learn the specific regulations of the entire boarding operations

understand the different phases of the boarding operations

grasp how critical decisions are made

see all the digital and non digital tools currently used

Shadowing & contextual inquiries

To understand the complexity of the tasks and the crucial decision-making I had to see the other roles involved in the boarding process.

User interviews

To clarify the processes I witnessed, I organized some in-depth interviews.

Survey

Noticing some differences of opinion in the handling of the process, I gathered more quantitative data, to make the right choices during the ideation phase.

Findings

Please note that I'll share here only generic or non-confidential insights.

I structured the insights in an affinity diagram and created the user journey of the gate agents, focusing on: the information needed at each stage of the process, the tasks and the interactions with the other staff.

The research showed that the boarding process can be split into 3 phases:

Boarding preparation

Actual boarding

Finalization of the flight & reporting

Unexpected events

Budget cut

While ready to iterate on the prototypes created during the design sprint, the project got impacted by some budget decisions and its scope had to be reduced. I was now only allowed to work on improving the flight details page.

Idea

After passively accepting the situation at first, I discussed with the information analyst and together we came up with an intermediary solution that, for a small increment in the job size, would still bring a lot of user-business value.
Together we presented our idea to the PO, who gave us the go-ahead.

Towards the new MVP

Prototype & usability tests

In collaboration with the information and business analyst, I came up with a prototype and organized a usability test with the gate agents, focusing on the 2 most difficult tasks. The test-iteration cycle lasted 2 weeks.

Final design

I tailored the process to the different phases of the boarding, with actionable information to empower ground staff in helping the passengers.

Phases

The process is now split in 3 phases where only the relevant data is displayed, to avoid information overload and speeding up the page loading time.

Smart passenger information

The information adapts to the operational needs: during the boarding, only the list of not boarded passengers and the notification feature are displayed, before the boarding closes, the missing passengers and their specific information are retrieved.