Optimising the Virgin Australia boarding pass

Product design • End to End

Introduction

Winning over a nation and the Virgin Australia’s front line.
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This project aims to develop a cohesive boarding pass design with optimised information placement. By addressing these design challenges, we seek to streamline operations for our staff and enhance the overall customer experience.

My role

Research, analysis, product design, design systems, user-testing.

The Team

2 designers, 2 product managers, 6 developers, 2 teams

Timeline

June 2022 - September 2022

Methods

Survey, gorilla testing, prototyping, heuristic evaluation, field studies & competitive analysis

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Cabin and ground crew have raised concerns about the inconsistencies in boarding pass designs, which lead to time-consuming processes and negatively impact our on-time performance (OTP).

From left to right: Web check-in, Android app screen one, Android app screen two, Apple wallet, Google Wallet (missing iOS app)

BREAKDOWN OF THE PROBLEM

📱 Disjointed experiences

The boarding passes for Wallet, App, Online Check-in PDF, Apple Watch, and printed versions all have different designs and present information inconsistently.

✕ Infants boarding pass not displaying

Omission of infants on Wallet versions, slow down the boarding process. Staff often need to manually print passes during boarding, causing confusion at the aircraft door and delaying departures.

💾 Dated user interface

Old type and colour.

😵 Minor UI issues

Text is hard to read for crew when guests enter the plane and flash their boarding pass and barcode is cut off in the iOS app on certain devices.

Process: Research and Analysis

Survey sent to ground crew and guests

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Inconsistent boarding pass designs hinder staff, forcing them to search different locations for flight details, dates, and destinations. This disorganisation slows down boarding and greeting, causing disorientation.
Crew look for flight number, date, destination, name and seat. To comply with CASA regulations.
Next, greeting guests on board the aircraft Cabin crew check name and seat next
Currently, some boarding passes only display colours to indicate tier levels. While colours are useful, the tier names should also be included for accessibility.
Some digital boarding pass system indicates infants with a subtle "+1" next to the passenger's name, which is easily overlooked. This inconsistency creates confusion for both passengers and staff.

Survey sent to Virgin Australia customers

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Seat number is #1 priority for guests
#2 Gate number and #3 boarding time were also top priorities for 77% and 74% of guests, respectively.
50% still print their boarding passes whether its at the airport or in their home.
29% of guests use the digital wallet to save their boarding pass (BP)
Some digital boarding pass system indicates infants with a subtle "+1" next to the passenger's name, which is easily overlooked. This inconsistency creates confusion for both passengers and staff.

PROCESS: Ideate

Low fidelity UX concept creation

Wireframes & Low fidelity UI: Created preliminary wireframes & UI of potential boarding pass layouts.

From left to right: Web check-in, Android app screen one, Android app screen two, Apple wallet, Google Wallet (missing iOS app)

PROCESS: Ideate

Online Web Check-in

Date, flight details and destination brought to the top of the page
Added the Frequent Flyer name - Red, Silver, etc (not just the colour)
Removed all the information below the boarding pass
Added cabin information
Button to add to Apple Wallet/Google Wallet
Infant has a seperate boarding pass

On the left is the current boarding pass shown to guests after online check-in. On the right is the updated design concept.

PROCESS: Ideate

iOS app

When guests check-in online, app users have their boarding passes automatically added to their app.

Condensed down to one page
Added terminal information
Barcode is higher on the screen & smaller
Boarding pass is exactly the same as the online web check-in

PROCESS: Ideate

iOS & Google Wallet

The system wallets on iOS and Google have limited space for displaying information on the front of the boarding pass. As a result, important details such as the terminal and tier name are not shown.

Validate: survey

User testing

Sent out another survey to passengers and staff to gather feedback on the designs via our Virgin Australia guest panel.

What did our cabin crew, ground staff & guests think?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Coherent

A consistent view for staff in the air and on the ground. Vibrant, consistent boarding passes.

Simple

Simpler, clearer information, accessible and bigger text, most important information easily readable.

More streamlined

All the important information for cabin crew is at the top making it easier for them to read when guests show their passes when boarding

Guests approved

72% of guests find it easy to locate important information on the boarding pass. Guests rated the ease of finding information similarly to the current and updated designs for iOS and Android apps.

Validate: Iterate

Iterative Improvements

Updated based on crew and guest feedback

Validate: Gorilla & usability Testing

Airport Testing: Evaluating the QR code and new boarding pass design with staff both in-flight and on the ground at Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane airports.

3

Flights

25+

Testing with staff

14

Different scanners

5

Different phone devices

KEY TAKEAWAYS

High scan success rate: Successfully boarded three flights using the new boarding pass without any delays.
Brightness matters: Higher screen brightness improves scanning efficiency.
Scanner orientation: Scanners vary in orientation, with some facing up and others facing down.
Cracked screens rarely impact scanning: Less than 4% of users have cracked screens, usually minor, so scanning is generally unaffected.
Sydney kiosks: These kiosks have currently have significant scanning issues, requiring a specific technique to scan boarding passes successfully. (This is not an issue of the new boarding passes)

Implementation

Implement the new boarding pass design, providing training and support to staff.

Working along side the teams App & Check-in team to integrate the new designs into existing systems, ensuring compatibility across platforms (iOS & Google). Handover also included detailed accessibility notes.

Developer handover file

Accessibility write up with screenreader notes

A pack was sent out to all crew and a new training module was created to prepare them for the coming updates

RollouT & Monitor

On release day, we encountered a major bug and a significant design flaw.
Guests were taking screenshots of their boarding passes (which is acceptable and we knew that was a behaviour), but unfortunately, those with smaller phones were scrolling down, and capturing only the most important information for themselves, such as seat and boarding time. This meant they missed critical details for staff, like the date and flight number, preventing guests from boarding the plane.
This oversight caused chaos, forcing us to revert the changes and reattempt the launch with updated designs two weeks later.

Design flaw: An example of what guests would screenshot with crops out the date and flight number.

impact

Boarding passes was rolled out in August 2022,impacting all Virgin Australian travellers and staff. It helped thousands of staff board passengers seamlessly and guests to easily get access their boarding passes.

Key Outcomes

Consistency

Consistency across all platforms creates a better user experience

Reduce cognitive overload

Less stress on cabin and ground crew.

Seamless infant boarding passes

Infant boarding passes to be treated like the physical boarding pass. Having a separate BP is a great solution because it is a really big and annoying issue for GS agents and cabin crew.

Just a nicer experience aye

Branding updated, easier to board infants, one unified boarding pass look and feel. Plus it looks nice. Win.