ALASKA AIRLINES - MOBILE APP

Enhancing Inflight Food Service
 

Significant update to onboard meal service that enables guests to place orders inflight that flight attendants receive in real-time. 
 

The Challenge

This feature request would have a significant impact on the flight attendant experience; not only digitally, but also 30,000 feet in the air. Alaska was aiming to be the first US airline to give guests the freedom to order food and beverage from their own devices during flight. The goal was to also have the lowest fresh food waste of any airline.

The Solution 

Onboard service was one of the biggest points of contention for our users. By examining all the pain points with the current workflow, I designed a hybrid model of what they use today to process orders. This design gives the user a visual indication of where orders are located in the cabin, while giving them all the information needed in the list view at the same time. 

Research

Gathering Requirements 

Beginning this project required some heavy lifting from product, engineering and design. Requirement gathering was a crucial opening step in ensuring there were no miscommunications between departments as this feature required collaboration with Alaska's E-commerce teams. I took the time to ask the right questions and spoke to the right stakeholders. As I moved through this process, I documented the different kinds of requirements needed to make this project successful. 

As requirements grew, I started to understand the scale of this feature necessitated a redesign.

Power User Workshops

Understandably, the business was very hush-hush about the next level of service project. Because our users were highly unionized, any significant change onboard involves a lot of red tape. Beginning this conversation with flight attendants required some creativity. I decided to dig into their experience with the current way of conducting service, gaining a deeper understanding of their current perspective on service and could then design the new feature to incorporate successful aspects while also addressing any issues with the current system.​

I conducted an activity where users would brainstorm all the frustrations and pain points with service, app related or not. Once they had come up with their own individually, we came together to discuss shared frustrations and criticality.

Strategy & Focus

Defining the Problem

I was itching to solve some of these problems that surfaced from the workshop. First, I needed to clearly define the problem to understand the scale and what the focus needed to be moving forward. How might we.. 

- Effectively solve existing problems while introducing new workflows
- Solve for communication issues during service
- Guide and support our users through this significant change in service flow

Business Goals

Next, I hypothesized how I could design a solution that connected the user needs with the business goals. This feature should solve existing pain points while simultaneously achieving business goals and metrics. Those metrics were:

- Get back to 2019 onboard revenue numbers (post pandemic) 
- Be the first U.S. airline to offer on-demand food service for guests
- Control real-time inventory in order to reduce fresh food waste onboard

Connectivity & App Reliability

One of the issues we needed to address was the peer to peer communication between guest and flight attendant devices. Our engineering team partnered with Ditto, a technology that allows the sharing of real-time data without internet connection. This partnership was make or break for the feasibility of onboard ordering. As our engineering worked on a proof of concept, they shared insights I would need to consider in the designs. 

Design & Iteration

Drafts on Drafts on Drafts

I analyzed user behavior and mental models to begin drafting the layout and overall concept. There were many different directions I explored while performing competitive analysis and pattern research. Over the course of a few months I had drafted 20-ish different concepts to begin fleshing out further. 

The design needed to: 

- Be a centralized place to conduct all aspects of service onboard
- Build upon what flight attendants are familiar with while introducing new concepts 
- Compliment the way our users are doing service rather than the other way around

Brainstorming with Apple

Throughout the design process, we met with our friends at the Apple Enterprise Design Lab to run some concepts past them and generate new ideas. They helped us craft native interactions and patterns to use in our designs, as well as best practices when testing and implementing. By leveraging their expertise, I came up with a hybrid model that would streamline onboard service while following Apple's Human Interface Guidelines. 

Introducing.. The Hybrid Model 

From our research, we discovered that flight attendants use the existing meal list and seat map in conjunction in order to visually understand where orders are located while also having the full order details needed for a successful meal delivery. We designed a hybrid model of the list and the map view to streamline this cumbersome process and eliminate redundant tapping. We improved the interaction by implementing a swipe action that would quickly mark the order as delivered so the user spends less time on their device, and more time interacting with the guest. 
 

Overall Improvements 

Centralized the guest data needed for successful meal delivery and order taking.

Improved the interaction by implementing a swipe action that would quickly mark the order as delivered so the user spends less time on their device, and more time interacting with the guest. 

Reduced cognitive load by only giving the user what information they need about the guest during service.

Next Steps

This feature has not yet been released, but has tested extremely well with flight attendants. Once the feature is released, we will include a release survey to collect CSAT and SUS scores to compare to our benchmarks for the current service feature last updated November 2021.