Brief

Design a series of micro services tied into an iOS app, that allow travellers to keep on top of all parts of their journey - especially when things don’t go to plan. 

Role

Whilst at the BIO Agency, I was one of the designers leading Customer Experience in this major digital transformation project during the first three months. I supported structuring the project running as multiple work streams in parallel, maintained relationships with business owners our development parter, led customer research, and helped setting up pilots for industry-first services and features.

Outcome

Working in sprints, the teams delivered solutions to address a variety of traveller pain points. The first feature to be deployed was the end-to-end timeline view in the British Airways iOS app which received much praise across social media. BIMA awarded the project the 2018 innovation award.

We utilised a rapid innovation programme to introduce a wide range of state-of-the-art service improvements, majority of which were industry firsts, placing British Airways at the forefront of the aviation industry. Some of the solutions introduced as part of the programme included:

1. A digital baggage credit, which allows customers to digitally 'bank' their baggage weight allowance

2. Capability to offer seat upgrades when passengers are already on board, providing additional revenue opportunities for British Airways and enhanced in-flight customer experience

3. Eliminating pain-points, e.g. automatic flight rebooking or reimagining compensation in case of significant delays

Speed to impact was of the upmost importance in this project with multiple work streams running in parallel over one to two week sprints. This meant that with every idea, I went from collaborative white-boarding on Monday to reporting on prototype and user testing outcomes on Friday.

Working at the frontend of innovation within the constraints of legacy systems, my team created numerous refined and user tested prototypes. These ranged from managing flight delays and compensation, booking micro services, handling baggage allowances in new ways, upgrading tickets in a fun new way, and more. The refined concepts fed a backlog for business testing and implementation for the years to come.

The first concept to become reality was the Timeline, the central hub for any further ideas to be built around. Today, it helps travellers maintain a birds eye view of all their key travel information.

While business goals will take a while to be measurable, the new app is already getting some great responses online. The first beta release of the project was launched in the first months of the new year. Customers referred to it as “huge improvement”, “a great idea” and “something that makes them even more excited about their holidays”.

In 2018, the project was made public and received the BIMA innovation award.