Narita Airport Mobile Application

Overview

The Narita Airport mobile application was created to help improve the flight layover experience. The app provides clear updates on flight changes, offers a comprehensive airport guide and a 2D/3D map, and allows travelers to easily find amenities and services in the airport.

*This project was created for ART519 - Media Design; Designing the Future at CSULB.

Timeline

April 2020 - May 2020

My Role

UX Researcher + Designer

Methods

Brainstorming, literature review, secondary research, competitive analysis, interviews, survey, personas, journey maps, flowchart, wireframes, prototypes

Tools

Figma, Keynote, Miro, Illustrator, Photoshop

The Challenge

During layovers, customers are often forced to endure hours of ‘dead time’ in the airport terminal behind the gate. As one of the world’s largest global airline alliances, Star Alliance partnered with Narita Airport in Tokyo to ask for a creative digital solution to help improve the layover experience and build brand loyalty.

Process

Research

Brainstorming Workshop

I conducted a brainstorming session with my classmates to uncover pains felt by passengers during a long layover. It was revealed that:

Passengers often face delays due to lack of updates on flight changes
Passengers feel stressed trying to navigate around an unfamiliar airport
Passengers are usually unaware of what services or amenities are offered at the connection airport

Product Vision

From these findings, I identified key business goals for the product:

The product will provide clear updates on flight changes
The product will help customers make use of dead time
The product will help build brand loyalty with Star Alliance and its airlines

Literature Review

Fodness, D. & Murray, B. (2007). Passengers’ expectations of airport service quality. Journal of Services Marketing, 21(7), 492-506.

“Participants...consistently stressed the critical importance of being able to find their way through the airport to either their departure gate, facilities departure gate, facilities (i.e. restrooms) or amenities (i.e. shops and snack bars).”

Secondary Research

futuretravelexperience.com
airtreks.com
travelwith2ofus.com

“Making use of personal devices to automatically communicate with the airport is one innovation [expected] to become mainstream.”

“Services available to passengers as they wait at the airport are critical to their expectations of service quality”

Competitive Analysis

As a starting point, I did some market research on competitors to understand the scope of existing airport and airline applications. I reviewed over 25 different airline and airport mobile applications and listed out the features + pros and cons of each application.

View the complete competitive analysis

Semi-Structured Interviews

I conducted 6 semi-structured interviews with both Economy and Business class travelers. My goal was to understand the types of activities that both traveler types engaged in during their layover. I used these insights to structure my interview questions for the online survey.

View semi-structured interview notes

Online Survey

Based on the responses received from the semi-structured interviews, I formulated questions for an online survey that was answered by 66 people.

View the complete survey

Survey Results

Analysis

Identify Pain Points

The 2 main issues for travelers I identified were: Wayfinding and awareness of gate/flight changes.

User Personas & Customer Journey Maps

Using the quantitative and qualitative data from the results of the interviews and survey, I developed personas for 2 target groups—Economy and Business class travelers. Next, I created a customer journey map for each persona type in order to identify the different touch points along the layover journey.