What’s easier than 1,2,3?

Last Christmas I took an Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Queenstown, and I have to say: it was the best check-in experience I’ve ever had.

Once I arrived at the terminal, I was quite impressed by how simple the process was. I basically had to follow two big signs on the concourse:

1. Start here (this sign was just above the self service kiosks)
2. Bag drop (this sign was just above a conveyor belt)

I got so excited about the whole thing that I had to take a few pictures while Jane, my girlfriend, was dealing with the check-in:

Scanning our e-ticket

Selecting the passengers

Answering the security questions

Printing the luggage tags

Weighing your bag and attaching luggage tags

Going to step 2: luggage drop-off

Job done!

The whole thing didn’t take more than 5 min!

Mpass: using your phone as a boarding pass

Air New Zealand is also rolling out self-service scanners at the boarding gates: you can either use your boarding pass or an mPass – a service that allows you to download your boarding passes for Air New Zealand flights onto your mobile phone. It generates a bar code that you can then scan at the kiosks to check-in or at the gates to board.

Scanning kiosks at the boarding gate

mPass: using your phone as a boarding pass

At Engine, we designed a similar concept for Virgin Atlantic, and the results were quite impressive. Check-in times were reduced by 50%, and passenger satisfaction increased substantially.

The great thing about this check-in is that it takes staff from behind the counter, enabling them to roam the concourse to help passengers. It’s a win-win situation: the airline has a much more efficient process, enabling staff to deal with problems that really matter (passengers with excess luggage or delayed flights), and passengers can go through a hassle-free check-in. Great example of how service design can bring value to both users and providers.

More info on Air New Zealand’s new check in here

Nordic Conference on Service Design

The Norwegian Design Council will host a conference on Service Design and Service Innovation in November.

They are inviting people to submit papers and abstracts on the following topics:

* boundaries, foundation and constituent parts of the emerging discipline of service design
* history and trajectories of service design
* inclusive-design approaches to services for all
* critical views
* methods, tools and processes
* case studies
* relation to design thinking, design leadership and design management
* education and research perspectives

more information regarding submissions and deadlines here

Designing services in Latin America

It seems that service design is starting to flourish in Latin America. Based in Chile, Broadeep employs T-shaped people to innovate services. Nice to see that service design is getting momentum in places other than Europe and USA.

Culture change

I found this interesting post from the Good Experience blog.  One of the key challenges of user experience is not to simply deliver a report with recommendations. More important than that, the challenge is to involve key stakeholders and decision makers during the research process, and get them more involved in what we call ‘the user centric approach’ to innovation.

Good practitioners know what their job really is: to spread customer-centered thinking throughout the organization. If you can get decisionmakers to sit in a listening lab for a day, you’ve hit a home run: they’ll start to “get it” within the first two 45-minute sessions.

Changing the organization is the brass ring. Once the organization changes, everything follows: from the strategy (“let’s provide world-class service to our customers, and measure our progress”) down to the tactics on the site (“let’s stop naming links with our internal jargon”).

via Good Experience

Airport + Hotel = waiting comfortably for your flight

I had to catch a flight from London to Auckland, with a 7-hour stopover in Shanghai.  And I have to tell you:  by the time you reach Shanghai, you’re already completely wrecked, and you know you are going to face another 12-hour flight to NZ.

Well, for those who want to have a nap or just chill out in a comfortable room while waiting for your connection, there is always the option to book a room at the Dazhong Merrylin Hotel. The hotel sits right inside the airport terminal, and you can book rooms for periods as short as a few hours. Extremely convenient and value for money.

I’m wondering why airports don’t do this more often. Hotels in terminals. You just need to walk around any airport, and you’ll probably see hundreds of people trying to sleep in the not-so-comfortable terminal seats. So, here’s an idea: capsule hotels (the ones invented in Japan, mostly used by office workers who can’t commute back home after a night out with colleagues) inside terminals. Cheap, doesn’t take too much space, convenient, and definitely more comfortable than any airport seat.

Looking for new ideas to invest in, Sir Richard Branson?