DELTA Ticket Redesign

Context: For airline passengers, the boarding pass is an essential artifact that guides them through the process of going through an airport and making it on time for their flight. If the boarding pass is difficult to parse, it might add a host of frustrations for both the passengers and airline staff.

Key Question: How might we redesign this artifact for easy of use and efficiency for its users?

Research

Who are the users?

It was essential to establish the primary audiences of the ticket in order to design with the user in mind. Personas were created for the three main users: the passenger, desk / boarding attendants, and security staff.

What information is essential to them?

Each data piece on the ticket was examined for its purpose and how they relate to each other.

How can the ticket best present this information?

A competitive analysis was conducted to review existing boarding tickets and their methods of organizing and presenting information.

Development

Quick sketching of potential layouts allowed for experimenting different groupings and flow of information.

Digital drafts were created and printed in low- fidelity to further explore layout and flow of information.

Refinement

What worked

• Grouping relevant info by user groups / timeline of traveling through airport
• Use of color to highlight important information
• Spacing and whitespace invoke calm

What didn't work

• No clear sense of hierarchy or landing point - only uses size to differentiate importance.
• Solution: Use more methods to establish hierarchy including font-weights and grayscale.


• Information is hard to read, especially if held at an arm’s distance.
• Solution: Use a better font choice, increase font size, and use lower-case words to enhance readability.

Iteration 2

Process

Following the critiques and suggestions that came out of the first iteration, more drafts were created. In this round, the focus was on establish a clear hierarchy and improving readability.

Remaining Issues

The resulting tickets still lacked a sense of flow that guides the audience’s eyes.

Final Product

In pursuing of the ideal information flow, it was helpful to go back to the research results on users and their journey of navigating the airport. Further refinements were made in adding color, deciding on whitespace and flow of the layout, and choosing appropriate font-weights and sizing for both hierarchy and aesthetic.

• Group information by relevant user groups
• Highlight passenger info through color, presented in order of journey through airport
• Hierarchy of passenger info established through large and bold fonts
• Added map of airport and estimated walking time to gate