Project Background

This is a student capstone project that I completed for DesignLab's UX Academy where I was tasked to add a feature to an existing business app. I chose to design a Mobile Augmented Reality Navigation (MARN) feature for the Hawaiian Airlines app.

The Problem

Parents are regularly stressed out when traveling with their family. They spend their time at the airport making sure their children are taking care of, worrying about flight changes, carrying their luggage around, and walking to the right gate. I wanted to alleviate some of their stress by adding a feature that they can use while traveling.

Competitive Analysis

I began my primary research with a competitive analysis. My goal was to understand how other travel apps compare with the Hawaiian Airlines app. I wanted to see what solutions are already out there and to identify other areas of improvement.

Click image to see details of the competitive analysis.

What I Discovered

The competitive analysis revealed the following information:

• The apps have airport maps to help users navigate an airport, but they are hidden between other miscellaneous features.
• The apps show a 2D route of where to go, but it's hard to visually see where you are headed when landmarks like bathrooms, stores, gates, etc. are not shown.
• It's important to consider accessibility routes for those who need it.
• The map must factor in whether the route includes a stop through security.

Interviews

After reviewing the gaps that other businesses had, I also wanted to learn about the experiences of actual travelers. What issues did they actually face when traveling through an airport? What do they need to make their experiences better? This led me to conduct four interviews with parents.

What I Learned

• The top things that parents look for at the airport are: bathrooms, gates, food, and elevators.
• Parents want to know the route of where they need to go and how long it will take to get there.
• They could use a navigation app to plan their time at the airport.
• They are also interested in having their flight information connected to their navigation and information on business hours of food places.

Persona

The interviews revealed similar backgrounds, needs, and frustrations between the users. Because of this, I created a persona called Jessica to help me keep in mind their needs and pain points as I narrowed the problem I want to solve.

Click image to see details of the persona.

"How Might We...?" Questions

I wanted to make sure that I solved the right problems for my users. Because of this, I came up with several HMW questions to help me explore the specific problem I wanted to solve:

• How might we help parents navigate unfamiliar airports?
• How might we help parents plan their time at an airport? 
• How might we ease the stress of parents traveling through an airport?
• How might we help parents find specific amenities at the airport?
• How might we help parents find and order food at airport restaurants?

Define the Problem

All of these questions were interesting problems that I could help solve. However, I needed to keep my users in mind so I decided that the first question was the problem I wanted to tackle for this project:

How might we help parents navigate through unfamiliar airports? 

MARN

Now that I had a specific problem to solve, I explored various solutions I could provide for my users. This led me to develop a Mobile Augmented Reality Navigation (MARN) feature for the Hawaiian Airlines app. The purpose of MARN is to provide turn-by-turn navigation overlaid on top of the real environment to help users effectively travel around unfamiliar airports. It will also have the following feature pins: 

• Add a Stop: Users can also add stops to their route for things like the nearest bathroom.
• Business Pins: This feature gives information about shops and restaurants at the airport, transportation, shuttle services, and airport hotels.

Storyboarding

Because MARN is a feature not usually seen by users, I decided to create a storyboard to visually show how users would interact with MARN and how it will help them solve their pain points.

Click image to see details of the storyboard.

Task Flow

I also created a task flow to show the overall steps that users will take to get to their destination.

Click image to see details of the task flow.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

My next step in the design process was figuring out where the feature would live in the Hawaiian Airlines app. When I first started sketching the MARN feature, I was inspired by the progress bars I saw in some travel apps. I also wanted to include a guided path but I wasn't sure how it was going to look as I designed for augmented reality.

Click images to see more details of the designs.

High-Fidelity Wireframes and Prototype

Since this was a feature of the Hawaiian Airlines app, I closely copied the brand's colors and fonts. To make the design realistic, I actually went to the airport to take pictures to show how users can go from one place to the next. I also turned it into a working prototype that I could test with users.

Click images to see more details of the designs.

Usability Study

Each screen in the MARN feature relies on the previous screen to navigate users to their destination. It was important to check that each step was working properly. Because of this, I conducted a usability study with five participants to test if users were successful in using the MARN feature.

Interpreting the Results

• The average (System Usability Score) SUS Score is 98 which indicates that MARN is highly usable.
• Most of the users found the feature “easy to use” and they commented on how useful this feature would be for them when they traveled. Several of them commented that they would this app on every trip if it was live.
• There were several minor issues that users wanted to improve which included more visibility on the flight information and business icons which I fixed in the final design.
• The users also provided several suggestions that I’d like to incorporate in future iterations of the design such as icons for other amenities (ex: nursery room) and a general airport directory.

Design Revisions

The usability study provided significant feedback on what I needed to fix:

• Users indicated that the flight information in the bottom dashboard was useful, but they wanted a popup notification, so they can visually see when there was a flight change.
• I described the checkpoints in the progress bar in the dashboard, so users can see where they are in their route.
• I also changed the color of the flight time and icon in the dashboard to show the change.
• Finally, I re-worded the “end” button to “pause” when users go to a stop so they know that their original route has been paused while they are at their stop.

Before

After

Next Steps

I would like to continue iterating on the app to include the suggestions that users made in the usability study such as adding more amenity stop icons and an airport directory. I’d also like to do a usability study with the elderly and people with disabilities to see how I can improve the app to help them with their pain points. As a frequent flyer of Hawaiian Airlines, I hope to one day showcase this design to Hawaiian Airlines to help improve the travel experiences of myself and other travelers.

Takeaways

I thought it would be too difficult to design an augmented reality feature when I had no experience in this area. However, I had a fun time taking pictures at the airport and imagining how the app could work for users even if they haven’t seen something like this before. This helped me understand what viewpoints and screens they needed to see to make my prototype a realistic experience.