Airport Baggage Drop-Off Reimagined
A Product Critique
I have always been fascinated by airports. They have the innate capability of evoking a myriad of emotions in passengers — uninhibited excitement on being reconnected with loved ones, fresh beginnings, heartbreaking farewells, the promise of new opportunities to name a few. However, what makes all of this interesting to me is that, the very essence of the “idea” of an airport is masked in a deep-rooted feeling of anxiety and despair. Harrowing layovers, painfully long lines, failed transits due to difficulty in way finding, innumerable flight delays, hostile decor, lost baggage … the possibilities are endless. It is the thought of ultimately leaving to renew an old friendship or embark upon an exciting journey in a new city that provides temporary relief to this chaotic rigmarole.
That being said, I absolutely enjoy visiting new airports as I believe they are a true representation of the various design thinking pattens and interaction philosophies of different cultures, offering unique and novel solutions to some of the above commonplace problems. My visit to Schipol Airport last month, December ’18, and first-time interaction with an automated luggage drop-off kiosk, took this fascination to a new level.
Tell Us About a Product You Love
Describe, in a blog post or video, the last product you used that took your breath away. Please explain what the product is, why you loved it, and any broader analysis or information you think is relevant. This can not be an Apple product. You can provide your submission as a link to your blog post or video.
Hence, for the KPCB Product Challenge, I decided to analyze the self service kiosks that I recently used and loved, and that dramatically altered my flying experience!
Who is the customer and what were the existing pain points?
Usually one of the most agonizing parts of flying for me is standing with my heavy bags in the long check-in line with the clock unforgivingly ticking away and anxiously waiting, as the line inches at an excruciatingly slow pace. This wait is made longer as uncooperative passengers haggle with airport attendants at the check-in desk or rummage through their bags looking for their documents, inviting impatient scowls from the tens of people waiting in line.
What product blew my mind?
I was flying out of Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport this December after Winter Break and was ready to be back home after an adventurous but long and tiring vacation. However, I knew that the last stretch of actually getting on the flight would be rife with airport troubles, as always. However, I was pleasantly surprised and happy to have been proven wrong.
I arrived for my international flight about 15 mins before the check-in desk opened to find an already long line. I joined the far end of the winding line, set my bags down on the floor and took out a book to read, to while away what I knew would easily be a painful, 45-min wait. 15 minutes later, the check-in desk opened and the line started moving surprisingly quickly. As I leaned over to peek at how long before it would be my turn, I noticed that beside the check-in desk manned by the attendant, there were a row of futuristic looking white pods with a tablet affixed to its front. I quickly realized that these were in fact, automated luggage drop-off kiosks! Within about 6 minutes, I was already at the head of the line, and the attendant pointed me in the direction of one of these kiosks. The setup consisted of a luggage belt with a retracting hood, a tablet with instructions, a scanner and a tag dispenser.
What were its goals and what did success look like?
In order for this product to be a success, it was essential that all the components were not just intuitive individually, but that they complemented one another and worked in complete synchrony. It also had the added expectation of being able to exceed if not match the experience of a human-led drop-off experience.
The Key Performance Indicator (KPI) was the total time taken for a passenger to check-in their baggage. This covers the entire process, including printing and attaching the baggage tag.
How did it work?
The entire process was surprisingly easy and straight forward. I walked up to an available kiosk and chose my Language Preference (Dutch or English). Once I selected my language preference, the app quickly transitioned into a Progress screen. For someone using this setup for the very first time, the UI was clean and intuitive. A numbered progress bar at the bottom showed the pending sequence of actions with clear labels under it : Place Bag, Identify, Labelling, Check Bag, Claim Tag. As you completed each step, the number changed to a big, green check mark, indicating success. It was instantly obvious that a lot of care had been taken into consideration while crafting both the physical and digital aspects of this experience. On the center-right of the screen for each of the 5 steps, was a large orange icon, pointing in the direction of where the pending action was to be performed. Bottom right diagonally for placing your luggage, upwards for scanning your boarding pass, downwards to collect your luggage tag and so forth.
Step 1: Place Bag
Following the instructions on the iPad screen (“Please place your first bag on the belt with handle on top”), I placed my baggage on the belt that flanked it. A small suitcase icon appeared on the bottom of the screen, with the weight of my bag updated on it.
Step 2: Identify
Once the system verified that my bag was properly placed on the belt, it then prompted me to scan my Boarding Pass. Intuitively, the steps followed a natural progression, similar to interacting with an actual person at the desk.
As soon as I scanned my boarding pass, a pop-up appeared on the tablet, asking me to verify my details : Name, Flight, To, From, Baggage Allowance Total and Baggage Allowance Remaining.
On close inspection, I noticed that the cognitive load placed on the passenger, for the information being displayed, was made optimal, obeying Miller’s Law of 5 plus or minus 2. Simple graphics and grouping of the information allowed for quick scanning of one’s personal information.
Step 3: Labelling
After verifying my details, I was informed that my label was being printed and would be dispensed from a slot below the screen (signified by a downward facing orange arrow).
When I first realized that this was going to be an automated drop off process, I was slightly nervous and apprehensive. In fact, I was most worried about being responsible for labelling my own bag. Since I was taking an international flight back, lost or delayed baggage was a probable occurrence and the baggage tag was the only way for me to track and identify my suitcase. Thus, making sure the label was fastened securely and properly placed on my baggage was critical.
However in reality, this step turned out to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing and well executed stages! Minute details and seamless instructions made it extremely natural and easy to follow along, even for a novice.
As prompted, the machine generated a standard luggage tag and the screen swiftly transitioned to detailed “sticking” instructions.
I followed the instructions on the screen and confirmed that I had attached the label.
Step 4: Check Bag
On procuring my confirmation, a mesh shutter slid over the front of the kiosk and began to scan my baggage.
Factoring in any edge cases where I could potentially be checking luggage in for someone else, a final confirmation popup appeared, asking me to verify whether the bag belonged to me.
Step 5: Claim Tag
As a last and final step, the kiosk generated a claim tag, shifted my luggage to the carousel, and reset its state to a fresh checkin. And just like that, I was done and on my way!
Demystifying the Secret Sauce
The primary reason I chose to critique this product was that, with so many different components (both hardware and software) working in unison, it was very easy for it to fail on multiple fronts. To some extent, the software was responsible for driving the user behavior and interactions, but its success depended also depended heavily on the basic usability of the hardware.
Additionally, rolling out such a product meant a deviation from the age-old traditional, check-in process, and was bound to be met with skepticism and frustration by any average, stressed-out passenger. That being said, I had an overall positive experience and would attribute its success to a combination of the following set of wins.
Impressive turn-around time
Meeting the primary requirement of its KPI, the entire process took me less than 2 minutes to complete! The timestamps on the screen indicate that I started at 8:44am and finished checking-in my luggage by 8:46am! Bearing in mind that this was the first time I was using this product, and that I was also taking breaks between each step to take pictures and videos, I was beyond satisfied with the start to end session time.
On speaking to an attendant I learned that as expected, the time continues to decline, from initially over 100 seconds, to below 65 seconds on average, with frequent flyers as fast as 30 seconds. Similar to how web-check in has quickly caught on, this was no different.
It is worth pointing out that I fell under the category of a standard passenger and expected user flow — I checked-in a single bag well-within the weight limit, was the owner of the checked-in bag, did not have any disabilities and was familiar with operating touch interfaces.
Availability and Flexibility
This product sought to fill the void of 24-hour availability. This meant that it was “always available” implying improved efficiency for the passengers, airline and airport. It also significantly reduces the required man-power and supply hours needed. Depending on the passenger influx, demand requirements and supply of manpower constraints, these kiosks can be repositioned and selectively made functional, freeing up personnel and channeling resources towards other, more pertinent services.
In addition, future iterations hold the potential to provide self-drop off at parking lots or other remote airport locations, eliminating a slew of baggage related woes.
Complete Control and Customer Retention
With the growing trend of automated web-check in kiosks, the desire to be in complete control of one’s baggage check-in, was a preference that was not too far in the future. This facility gave the passenger complete autonomy over the process, greatly reducing the need for human contact and leading to fewer mishandled bags.
For the less initiated, there was an attendant always available for any assistance and an open counter, did the passenger prefer to check-in manually.
Infrastructure changes and Implementation Costs
The need for a re-haul of the airport infrastructure was minimal as the units could simply replace the traditional check-in desks.
A study demonstrated that the costs associated with a self-service drop-off machine is ultimately compensated by the efficiency introduced by its implementation. The costs associated with employing human personnel far outweigh the long term costs of procuring and maintaining the equipment. In some sense, the process was also airline agnostic. This meant that, if well executed, a user could drop off their baggage at any nearby kiosk.
Seamless and crisp UI/UX
The instructions were short, simple and easy to follow. From observing passengers who checked in prior to me, I gleaned that the tablet screen size and positioning, text font and size and choice of language for the instructions seemed optimal. I watched senior citizen proceed through the process with minimal fuss and walk away satisfied with the experience.
As a stickler of details, some of the finer nuances greatly appealed to me and added to the overall success of the User Experience. I liked that, at every stage of the check-in process, above the instruction was an illustration or video clip of what the required interaction entailed. Whether it was a video clip instructing you to place your luggage on the belt or how the adhesive on the tag worked, there was almost no-room for misinterpretation. A bright, bold orange arrow also pointed in the direction of where your interaction was required. A clean, pinned header showed me the current time and option to modify my language preference at any stage, and the footer, an image with final weight of my baggage.
Potential for improvement
While I didn’t have any major complaints, there were certain areas that I felt definitely had scope for refinement.
- My first moment of uncertainty was when was when I reached the kiosk, I didn’t know which belt corresponded with which tablet. In fact, I placed my luggage on the wrong belt and was confused when the tablet didn’t update. In retrospect, the arrows did provide some intuition as to where I should be placing my suitcase, but this was definitely not immediately obvious.
- Typically, had this been the traditional, human-led process, I would’ve been able to ask the attendant to place a “fragile” sticker on my suitcase. But automating the check-in experience abstracted away smaller and pertinent interactions like these. Perhaps a little more investigating on the screen might’ve uncovered an option to do so. However, in my mind this wasn’t too big a concern since off-late, a lot of airlines don’t provide these stickers anymore, and this system felt like a reflection of that updated regulation.
- Since I was an average customer with pretty standard requirements, I didn’t witness any of the edge cases like special baggage needs (sports equipments, strollers, paying for oversized/overweight baggage etc). I didn’t see any slots on the kiosk for inserting a credit card to make a payment, so my assumption was that all outliers were handled manually by the attendants at the check-in desks.
- While these were some of the finer concerns, there were a couple of larger system-level uncertainties that stood out. This approach was definitely not disability friendly and placed a heavy reliance on being able to interact with a touch interface. It also presumed mobility, rendering most of the operations as the customer’s responsibility. Technical glitches were a single point of failure, especially in the absence of any flight attendants.
- As for the user flow, the system assumed that the passenger had already web-checked in, and asked them to scan their boarding pass when they reached the kiosk. This meant that, unlike in the traditional baggage drop off, if you reached the front of the line and had not checked in already for some reason, you would need to find another web-checkin kiosk, check-in and then re-join this line. This unclear fragmentation of a single process adds an unnecessary overhead on the passenger.
- The self-service kiosk didn’t have a provision for “group check-ins”
- From a security standpoint, there were no processes in place to actually verify the identity of the passenger. This meant that there were gaping loopholes for security violations.
Future iterations
While this product is still in its infancy, and slowly making an appearance in larger airports, in addition to solutions to the deficiencies highlighted above, here are a few suggestions that I believe would help fine-tune the experience. Of course, while these ideas are not supported by user-research or market studies, access to relevant data would definitely help shape and prioritize some of these additions.
- Voice controlled interface : With the growing popularity of smart-assistants, voice powered technology is now on the rise. Bearing in mind constraints like noisy environments, announcement-free zones etc, an interesting feature to explore would be the ability to introduce a hands-free interaction with the system by using voice commands. This addition would also help alleviate vision-related impairments, making it a disability-friendly option.
- Biometric passenger verification for improved safety (and reduction in reliance on manual checks) : The kiosk could capture a passenger’s biometrics via a facial scan at the first touch point in the journey. Once verified, a secure single token is can be created and used at every stage in the journey — bag drop, aircraft boarding or passport control eliminating the need to use an ID or passport for manual verification.
- Unified Software : By making the software on the tablet airline agnostic, users would be able to use this product regardless of what airline they were flying. This would also reduce the learning curve for passengers, standardizing the process across their airport visits.
- Intelligent cloud services to estimate where additional check-in kiosks are needed to reduce passenger queue times. Using flight data and passenger flow information, periods of disruption including weather-related delays or flight cancellations can be preemptively detected and provisions can be made to deal with these situations (including repositioning these kiosks in more crowded areas, reorganizing airport staff as per demand etc).
Parting thoughts
With an increase in the integral parts of our daily routines being automated, users are beginning to rely heavily on automation to reduce some of their common hardships. However, the key to this approach is rooted in the philosophy that the newly introduced system diminishes the existing pain points and helps intelligently solve the user’s needs, without exacerbating the current conditions.
As I walked away from the kiosk, I was overcome by a feeling of relief and unexpected joy at having saved about 45 minutes. Since the primary goal of the system was to reduce passenger wait times, it far exceeded my expectations, making me wonder where this product had been in all these years that I had witnessed countless airport traumas.
