Old Individuals are cool! Design for them is not!
"How might we improve the way-finding and navigation at airports to help aging travelers. "
Older adults experience difficulties with navigating their environments,it is increasingly important to design public spaces with older adults needs in mind. My broader goal is to create a way-finding design for airports,that facilitates and supports a healthy level of independence in older adults and helps them travel alone and navigate the airport successfully.
My role: UX Designer , UX Researcher ,
Tools: Adobe XD, Figma , Adobe Illustrator
Team: Individual Project under the guidance of Prof. Neil Harner. (Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA)
Timeline: 3 Months
Why This Problem Space?
30% of the air travelers are above the age of 65 and by the year 2030, one in five travelers in the world will be 65 years of age or older
Design Solution
A Kiosk that will be located at multiple locations at the airport like the main gate, the parking lot near lounges near check in queues etc that gives older individuals a map of everything inside the airport. Users can directly get a map to their flight gate or explore the airport and get directions to restrooms, ATM , food-courts etc. They can also have an on to go assistance map with out the need to download an app.
Interactive and simple maps in the language of your choice.
Scan the QR Code to send map to your phone.
Simply open the map in your browser and get On-the-go assistance
Research and Exploration
Secondary Research
Academic Research
Non-Academic Research
Primary Research
Look :Observing Human Experience
Understand: Analyzing challenges and understand the user.
Make: Envision future possibilities.
Secondary Research
Currently failing signage
Signage at airports does not take into consideration issues that older adults face, such as experiencing difficulties with focusing their visual attention and decrease in Spatial memory and route learning performance with age, as do the ability to use maps, to navigate an environment, to identify turning points in route sand to form and use mental maps.
Struggle with Mobility
Struggle with Mobility: Airports are vast spaces. With age, there are specific barriers such as health conditions, height, and reach, vision, physical strength, etc. that affect the mobility of older adults making navigating and traveling across the space is very difficult without help. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a disabled person as one with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Many older travelers face physical or mental limitations but that does not classify them as disabled, but it still cause difficulties in navigating an airport terminal
Competitive Analysis
Compared many travel-related, pre-trip planning, and flight tracking apps.These airport navigation mobile applications still required significant manual intervention and are not tailored to need of older adults specifically.
Key Insights after Secondary Research
Failing Current Solutions
Though there are signage available at the airport they aren't quite sufficient as they can be extremely dense with information. Older adults find it very hard to navigate the airport by just following the signage.
Struggle with Technology
Though there are several pre-trip and airport navigation applications, Older individuals struggle using these applications , thus they need a navigating solution that will be easy to use and understand.
Accessibility Considerations
Aging individuals traveling alone face a unique set of challenges while navigating the airport.The solution should consider the accessibility needs of old travelers like vision issues and cognitive problems.
Primary Research
Look : Observing Human Experience
Ethnographic Research: Interviewing
I interviewed 12 aging travelers older than 60 years to learn about the user's current journey for navigating an airport and to understand the pain points in their entire navigation process.
To view detail interview documentation click here.
Participatory Research :Radar Diagram
I made a Radar Diagram to visualizing and compared each feature along their own axis, and overall differences are apparent by the size and shape of the polygons. It is easy to figure out the importance of each feature my mapping them on the radar.
Evaluative Research :Think out loud.
After following think out loud and trying to understand the problems of the aging population i understood how they see the environments yellowish with vision issues that come with age. Trying to see everything from their point of view gave some deeper insights on what needs improvement
Understand: Analyzing challenges and understand the user.
Affinity Clustering
Brainstormed and did affinity clustering Identified visualize a user's need and mapped the necessary features in the best way possible.Mapped out the positive, negative, and potential and then finalized the scope of the problem.
People and Systems - User Persona
Developed a user persona to understand the targeted user better. The target user is an older adult 65+ age who has traveled by air before.
It makes us understand the goals, needs and challenges a user faces.
People and Systems- Empathy Map
To Capture who a user or persona is I developed an empathy-map to categorize the knowledge of the user into one place. It can be used to:
Categorize and make sense of qualitative research (research notes, survey answers, user-interview transcripts)
Discover gaps in the current knowledge and identify the types of research further needed to address it.
People and Systems - Journey Map
Further with all the data I made a compact visualization of an end-to-end user journey. This journey maps illustrate all the touch points in the user journey and helped me look at the problem through the users lens so that I can visualize their literal journey through the funnel.
Make: Envision future possibilities - Story-boarding
Before Ki-Ask
This storyboard shows how the user faces problem with the current available signage, how they have to ask around and how the entire airport navigation is very difficult.
By Using Ki-Ask
This storyboard shows how Ki-Ask makes the entire user journey very easy and enjoyable. How the users find Ki-Ask useful .
Insights after Primary Research
80%
Got lost in an airport and thus avoid travelling alone.
75%
Said current signage is insufficient to navigate the airport easily.
60%
Said they do not use their phone much so they were not keen on an app to be the solution.
Feature Validation
Kano Model
Using the Kano Model helped me to determine and prioritize which attributes are most important for the user. It helped me to make informed decisions about which features to improve first or in what order I should add features.
MoSCoW Model
Using the MoSCoW Method, I separated my ideas into ‘Must Haves, Should Haves, Could Have, and Won’t Haves’. This helped me identify the main features that I wanted my app to have, as well as items that I could have as future scope
Re-evaluation
To validate and re-evaluate the features that I had finalized for my app I did an online optimal card sort. I told the users to rank the features in low high and medium impact. This validated my features as important and less important features. And gave me quantitative validation of my features.
Design Decisions
User Flow
Based on the latest iteration of my site map, I created a user flow in preparation before going ahead and making my wireframe screens. The user flow shows each of the use case instances. It displays all possible instances that can be there in the Kiosk
Information Architecture
I went ahead and mapped down the information architecture for the kiosk with all the features and pages that I wanted to have and sorted them as main pages – sub pages – popup pages.
Wireframing and Testing
I created my wireframes by first sketching out the main screens of the Kiosk. Then I created digital wireframes using Adobe XD . I tested out the initial clickable prototype of wireframes with the users and made a second prototype after the user feedback and changes recommended.
Round 1 of wireframes
Round 2 of wireframes
After testing out the initial wireframes with users, prepared the second round with the changes and the feedback from first round of testing. Click here to view the clickable prototype.
Key changes after user testing
On-boarding
The user testing reflected that users needed some screens to show how KiAsk works considering they were first time users. Users also wanted an option to choose a language of their choice.
Menu at the bottom
User tests suggested that the Kiosk would need a menu at the bottom for ease of use. The users were also unclear with the home button in the initial wireframes , so the options were made more clear and easy to use.
Send to phone button
User tests suggested that in the initial wireframes the users were very confused to find the send to phone button to send the map to their phones. This was changed and tested again.
Visual Design
Branding and Identity
Moodboard
Branding and Identity: Before creating a logo I decided on the name KiAsk for my product – because it is a Kiosk and the users will Ask it for directions – KiAsk.
• It was quite fitting to create an icon that included the character of the product and the purpose.I combined the main purpose of this entire problem – Air travel with the name KiAsk and sketched a logo. The blue color choices were inspired from the mood board are intended to allude to feelings of calmness and fun and help
I created a mood board that related to the 5 adjectives that I chose to define the identity of the product.
•Informative •Calm •Simple •Helpful •Fun
Final Prototype
A solution to way finding at an Airport - Older individuals no need to worry about travelling alone by air an finding way finding at the airport difficult. KiAsk helps them to navigate the airport with ease and makes it a fun experience.
Here is an example of Judy’s journey. To view the detailed prototype click here.
Key Task Flow One/ On boarding screens
Judy wants to find her way through the airport. She has not used KiAsk before. She starts using KiAsk by choosing the langue of her choice .Then the on boarding screens show her how KiAsk works, she can then find her way through the airport.
To view the detailed prototype click here