INPosture
Enhancing Airport Navigation for All Travelers
Project Overview
- Project Title: WAYR
Role: UX Researcher, Designer, Manager, and Tester
Timeline: 3 months (Academic Project)
Team: A team of 4 HCI students
The Challenge
Navigating a busy airport is often a stressful experience, especially for novice or non-native language-speaking passengers. The problem is a significant one, impacting 4.5 billion travelers annually and leading to increased cognitive load, missed flights, and a poor user experience. Our team set out to answer the question:
How might we help novice and non-native language-speaking air passengers make easier decisions while navigating through the airport?
My Contribution & Impact
As a key member of a multi-disciplinary student team, I drove the project from initial discovery to final prototype. I led the research phase by conducting a literature survey of 10 papers, designing interview questionnaires, and performing online observations. My insights from an interview with a middle-aged, non-native speaker directly revealed critical pain points. I then translated these findings into a tangible solution by designing user flows and storyboards and developing medium-to-high-fidelity prototypes for the app's onboarding and key features. Finally, I was responsible for evaluating the solution through a cognitive walkthrough, which led to crucial design iterations and a more intuitive final product. My work ensured that the user's voice was at the center of every design decision, ultimately creating a solution that was not only innovative but also deeply empathetic.
Discovering the Problem through Research
Key Research Methods
- Stakeholder Interviews: Speaking with a non-frequent, middle-aged traveler to uncover specific pain points.
- Literature Survey: To understand the cognitive load caused by airport signage.
- Online Observation: Analyzing vlogs and blogs to understand real-world user frustrations.
Key Findings
Through our research, we discovered that travelers face significant challenges with:
- Communication Gaps: A non-native speaker almost missed his flight due to difficulty communicating with staff.
- Intuitive Navigation: Users found it hard to locate essential amenities like restrooms and food courts without asking for help.
- Terminal Transit: Switching between terminals was burdensome due to a lack of clear information.
Designing the Solution: WAYR
Key Design Decisions:
The core of our solution was the decision to use AR technology. This choice was a direct response to our finding that travelers suffer from information overload. AR allows us to simplify the environment by overlaying a clear, step-by-step path, reducing the cognitive load and making navigation effortless.
Solution Highlights:
- AR-Driven Navigation: The app uses augmented reality to provide a clear, visual path to the user's gate.
- Personalized Experience: Users can select their preferred language and add checkpoints (e.g., a coffee shop, a restroom) to their journey.
- Real-time Updates: The app automatically updates the route and notifies the user if there are any changes to their flight schedule or gate.
Validation & Refinement
Key Feedback & Iterations:
The walkthrough revealed critical areas for improvement in the prototype:
- UI Clutter: The AR camera screen was too crowded with UI elements, hindering the primary function.
- Onboarding: Novice users would require a more intuitive onboarding process to understand the AR functionality.
- User Orientation: The app needed to provide assistance if the user was holding their phone incorrectly.
We implemented these changes in our final design, ensuring a cleaner interface, a more robust onboarding experience, and better user support.
The Final Prototype
Impact & Reflection
Learnings:
- Empathy is Key: The project reinforced the importance of building empathy for users, especially those in high-stress situations.
- Simplicity is Design: The goal was not to add more information, but to present the right information at the right time, proving that less is often more.
- AR as a Tool: We discovered the potential of augmented reality as a powerful tool for solving real-world navigation challenges
This project was a fulfilling experience, and I'm proud of the collaborative effort that led to a solution that could truly improve the airport experience for millions.
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