Inspirational UI design for flight scheduling in 2040
Problem to solve
The scheduling department from KLM is currently working with a complex and outdated system to schedule their flights. Also a lot is done via the use of Excel-files, which makes it very error prone. Recently they developed a new system which can replace one part of the existing program. However the users are not convinced of its user-friendliness and therefor do not want to adopt the new scheduling system. It does not comply with their wishes and needs and reliability for scheduling flights. Both are important topics, knowing that they have to schedule thousands of flights a week. This scheduling process is not done in a day, but can take up to multiple years. The schedulers have to cope with a lot of regulation, permit & flight restrictions, employees CAO, partner alliances, code shares, availability of slots / airplanes / gates, ground services, air traffic control, maintenance, market developments and a whole lot more. To maintain grip on this complex field of scheduling and keep track of all future developments and the competition, a new user friendly and reliable User Interface needs to be designed and developed. To convince the scheduling users and the IT department, the management of the scheduling department asked for inspiration and possibilities to get everyone on board again. The main question that the scheduling department of KLM asked Idean: What will flight scheduling in 2040 look like?
What I did
Kick-off
During this phase I wan't involved due to another project I was working on. My colleagues sat down together with the scheduling department of KLM to discuss the brief and scope of the project. After knowing the information we sat together to draw a plan how to approach this request and aligned with our stakeholders at KLM to come to a mutual approach.
Research & Analysis
Desk research
Together with another Service Designer, we started with conducting research to deep dive in the matter of scheduling. We received a lot of existing documentation about the current way of scheduling, including a list of requirements they used for creating the new scheduling system that is not adopted. We made this our own so we could use the information in our interviews to gather more relevant insights.
Interviews
We interviewed multiple stakeholders to gather insights in their current way of working, the process of scheduling, the parties that were involved in this process, the regulations and rules, but also to really understand what their needs and requirements are for a new scheduling system.
Requirement Analysis & Process mapping
We converted all our insights to a new list of requirements and process flows with design scenarios for the to-be design. We discussed these with the Visual Designer and Creative Director, so they have enough insights into the scheduling experience. The requirements and process flows were checked with the stakeholders to be sure if they were correct.
Wireframing & Designing
With the requirements and wireframes in mind, I started to draw wireframes, with multiple specific situations we wanted to show in the UI designs. In discussion with the Visual Designer, these wireframes were converted to multiple compact designs. The reason for making more than one design is the fact that we wanted to show the stakeholders multiple options to figure out what tone of voice and style most appealed to them. This would help us with creating the final design. This was an iterative process for which we had a lot of discussions between me, the Visual Designer and Creative Director, but also with the stakeholders so we would come up with a final UI design which appeals to everyone.
Workshop facilitation on design principles and future trends
We noticed that it was hard for our stakeholders to step out their normal way of scheduling and make the switch to the way of scheduling in 2040. This made us decide to facilitate a workshop before we deliver the final UI design. In this workshop we immersed all the schedulers in the design process to get them out their current way of working. After our presentation about the future trends in technology, with some existing business cases that we related to future scheduling, we presented our concept UI design, and set up the design principles together. Each stakeholder could vote for their 10 most important principles that we bundled to a list of 10. After defining these design principles we split up the group in subgroups and gave them the task to create multiple designs themselves. A homepage and a landing page, one for the year 2030 and one for the year 2040. This process was timeboxed. When the time was over, each group presented their designs to the other groups. Which resulted in some really valuable discussions and new insights we could use for our final design.
Impact & Learnings
The deliverable were multiple designs, made by our Visual Designer and Creative Director, that were bundled to one design, based on the preference of the scheduling users. This design is pitched to all scheduling stakeholders to inspire them and let them understand the urge of a new scheduling UI, knowing the market is changing and their roles and responsibilities are changing because some parts of their work will be automated. Something that most of the schedulers do not want to accept. The UI for 2040 will give IT and the schedulers insights in the direction they are moving. Hoping that it will help with redesigning the new developed UI so it matches the users’ needs. This was a real challenge, because for making these designs we had to deep dive in the complex matter of scheduling. We want to understand their current way of working, the processes they followed, the regulation, restrictions, rules etc they have to follow to make their current schedules. However, for the UI in 2040 we had to partly let go of all this knowledge. Not everything will be the same again. A lot will be automated. However for the inspiration, we keep track of the current rules, restrictions, and regulation so the stakeholders could recognise themselves working with the UI.
