Users become frustrated during the boarding process. Often times customers are not in gate vicinity to hear boarding announcement and/or might become confused with announcements if the boarding gate is near another boarding gate already in progress. The current United app doesn’t provide easy access to boarding documents and gate directions.
Solution:
Reduce frustration and friction in the boarding process by restructuring the United Airlines app content so important information is easy to access, by making the app more life-like in its interaction with the user, and by creating a push notification with easy access to boarding passes/directions.
Restructuring Content
I focused on 4 main areas of quick access: Check-In, Book A Flight, Flight Status, and Entertainment. These categories seemed to be the most important areas that generate revenue but are also functional in the sense that users interact with them frequently. In the prototype you’ll see a grid of these categories on the dashboard screen so that they are initially shown and are easy accessible through the tab bar.
Interaction
The current United app is fairly static and doesn’t feel life-like in the sense that the interactions don’t seem conversational and fluid much as a contemporary app would be. The way elements in a product engage the user can be a subtle but key feature in both guiding your customer and engaging them. You’ll see the addition of motion on the login screen with the United logo transitioning from the main focus all the way to a small detail on the main dashboard header.
Push Notifications
To further address some of the issues surrounding the boarding process, a push notification was added when the customer’s group starts to board. The iOS native notification allows the user to easily access their boarding pass wether they are in another app or have their iPhone locked. Additionally, if the customer is away from the gate, they can easily get directions from their current location within the airport terminal to the boarding gate with a turn by turn map.
After almost a year of not having a proper portfolio website, I decided to finally build one myself. To describe my process, I created the layout and styles in InDesign and then translated it to HTML, SCSS, and Javascript using Zurb Foundation as a framework. I’ve isolated this subfolder (/blog) in order to experiment with Jekyll, a simple, blog-aware, static site generator. It allows me to write posts in Markdown while using a template based structure. Other pages on this site will give you more information about myself or my work.
Home Page:
The first page everyone one sees, the home page, contains all of the most important information I would like viewers to see. It describes what I do in a large headline statement, displays some of my most recent projects so viewers can easily view my work, and gives a way to contact me.
Project Detail:
Each project detail pages, as you might expect, gives more in-depth information about the project. I usually describe the general overview, hightlight some of the challenging areas of the project, describe other important design decisions, and explain the role(s) I played. If the project is a website, a button to the live site precedes the last paragraph of the project detail, for quick access.
Lettering Sketches:
The lettering sketches section is a small collection of just a few of the things I have lettered over the past few years. As I experiment more with lettering I’ll defiantly add more pieces to this page. Check it out if you enjoy hand lettering!
Study Abroad:
I studied abroad my final year of university at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. This section is my process journal, things I thought, saw, and heard during my trip. It spans over six months and describes just about everything I experienced at school and while traveling.
Process:
This section describes my process and what I look for in a job/project. If you want to work with me or learn how I create projects then this is definitely for you.
Blog:
A collection of writing on pretty much anything from a side project explanations to a short development tutorial or a walk-through of my hand lettered journey. Eventually, I plan to publish my latest and long-time side project about rethinking the airline boarding pass.
About:
Finally, in the about section, you’ll learn where I went to school and where I worked until now. You’ll also see a list of my current skills and the skills I’m working on.
