Supporting the aviation industry: a traveler-centered approach

The aviation industry is fundamental to today's connected global economies, rapidly and effectively linking people, places and cultures. However, aviation struggles to provide a high quality of service; air travelers typically report dissatisfaction and frustration with their experiences. This paper describes fieldwork in the form of 63 interviews that aims to understand the needs of air travelers in order to improve user experiences during and around air travel. Three themes from this traveler-centered user research process are presented and the design of FlyTalk, a mobile phone application inspired by this data and tailored to the needs of air travelers is described. FlyTalk collates existing information about airports and their procedures, presents this to users in a location and context aware interface and seamlessly integrates social media features connecting travelers with both their service providers and each other. This paper argues air travel is an important but overlooked domain for HCI practitioners and that mobile applications that meet user needs in this scenario have the potential to reduce travel costs while improving traveler satisfaction.