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Taurus App
Overview
Adding to the Taurus seating service, an innovative experience for airport departures, is a mobile application providing seating availability, locating, booking, and additional functionality for users.
The Taurus mobile app brings all of the features of Taurus to your fingertips for near instant use.
Year
2021 - 2022
Role
Product Designer
Surfaces
Mobile, Desktop, and App
Easy Booking
Skip the line! Simply tap your device, set your time, and you're all set.
With all of the features available built into the application users are able to browse seating availability on a terminal map and book using built in NFC on each seat.
Sense of Security
Seamlessly provide a sense of security for users storing their carry-on and or personal items.
Users can lock and unlock their seats storage compartment directly through the mobile app on a simple and clean interface.
Design Process
Hypothesize
Problem Statement
How might we integrate Taurus feature set into an easy to use mobile application?
Key Insights/Brainstorm Features
In order to build key insights and brainstorm features, I organized and separated Taurus' app fundamentals into booking, security, and help to ideate potential insights.
Booking
Needs to be a quick and simple process
Easy to understand user flow
NFC for direct seat booking
Security
Lock users seat storage compartment
Unlock users seat storage compartment
Help
How might we help users understand the service?
Troubleshoot
Show seating availability and location
Research
Market Trends
Pre-Covid: In 2019, 88,068,013 passengers went through LAX, with 17,341,562 international passengers going through Tom Bradley International (Terminal B) the international terminal of LAX. (Source: Los Angeles World Airports Traffic Comparison)
In 2019, out of 7.3 million flights on average 79.21% were on-time, 18.72% were delayed, and 1.82% were canceled. (Source: United States Department of Transportation - Bureau of Transportation Statistics)
During Covid: As of 2022, the state of the airline industry including all variables is expected to recover in the near future however current projections still indicate a slow return to pre-crisis levels. (Source: International Air Transport Association)
Target Users
Delayed
or
Cancelled
Lounge Users
Departures
The Taurus seating service and mobile application has three main target users among departures. The first being individuals whose flight is cancelled or delayed leading to an extended wait time in the terminal. The second being individuals that typically use private lounge services and lastly individuals that have arrived earlier than their flights boarding time window.
Competitive Analysis
Napcabs
Sleep cabins for added comfort and privacy in airport terminals.
Pros: Comfort, Privacy
Cons: Price, Overhead
Airport Lounges
Premium seating service for select passengers.
Pros: Added comfort, Amenities
Cons: Uncomfortable overtime, Limited availability
Terminal Gate Seating
The standard seating option in airport terminals.
Pros: Widely availability
Cons: Privacy, Uncomfortable overtime, Difficult to sleep on
Opportunity Matrix
Taurus ①
Napcabs ②
Airport Lounges ③
Terminal Gate Seating ④
For the opportunity matrix, I first determined the X and Y axis for the graphs and choose "Comfort vs. Price" and "Sleep vs. Price" as the variables being fundamental to the businesses opportunity and competitiveness. I then plotted the points for Taurus and the competition and determined the "Blue Ocean," the most opportunity and least competition, zone for the graphs.
Research & Findings
Before pivoting, my research included analyzing the market, one-on-one interviews, and group interviews to learn users pain points with air travel. To better understand my interviewees pains I asked questions regarding their air travel experience.
How often do you fly?
Have you ever experienced a layover and or cancellation?
What is your worst experience in an airport?
These interviews led to discovering the pain points of departures in airports. Resulting in pivoting to creating a product/service to address airline travelers problems with privacy, comfort, and security.
Privacy: Even though they are in an airport it is natural to want some form of privacy. Especially when a person is tired and wants to nap. How can we increase the sense of privacy in an airport terminal?
Comfort: Simply put there are few if not no comfortable places in terminals for individuals to relax or sleep in. It became more apparent how uncomfortable terminals can be to the interviewees the longer they were in the terminal. How can we provide an experience that increases users comfort?
Security: A common fear among the people I interviewed was the fear of having their personal items and or carry-on stolen. How can we make users feel their personal items are secure?
Ideation
Sketching
My personal favorite step of the design process and stage of ideation is sketching. After defining the features and analyzing the research, I started ideating through multiple sketches. This process assists me in problem solving, introducing new ideas, and defining the user experience and user interface.
User Flows
For the main experiences, creating an account and booking, I created user flows that are simple and efficient. For creating an account the flow is meant to guide users in entering information while providing reasoning. While the booking user flow is designed to be easily understood and quick to execute.
Create Account User Flow
Booking User Flow
Wireframes
Based on my sketches and user flows, I created low-fidelity wireframes of the user interface of the booking and creating an account process.
Prototyping
High Fidelity Frames
App Clip
To quickly access booking users can open a small part of the Taurus App, known as an App Clip.
Home
① Add flight to receive flight information and status updates
② Main menu
③ Taurus location and seat availability
④ Total seats available in current location
Book
① Top view visual seat interface for quick seat selection
② Easy booking with quick booking duration adjustment and visuals of the seat number and total price
Pay
① Terminal and seat number
② Booking duration and end time
③ Price breakdown
④ Payment options
Controls/Home
① Airport map showing terminals that offer Taurus
② Seat status of users current booking
③ Time left countdown
④ Lock and Unlock button for seats storage compartment and Help button
Next…
Prototype: Create more high fidelity frames of the user interface to assist in building a full high fidelity prototype for testing.
Test: On multiple devices, test the responsiveness and quality of the user interface. Conduct user testing and A/B testing on multiple users to gauge product success.
Refine: Continue to hypothesize, research, ideate, prototype, and test to continuously refine the Taurus application to improve the user experience.
Takeaways
Limit Confusion: Utilize a design system to be more consistent across the user interface to limit confusion and positively boost a users experience.
Efficiency: While speed is important, achieving the users and the company's goal efficiently is of higher importance. For the steps of creating an account my takeaway was guiding the user can be more effective than a list of entries.
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