Flight Buddy Team Toqepi Karan Chitnis Feiyang Xue Brian Ly Phoebe Lin Yiju Rita Tuan
FlightBuddy is an application that assists users in catching a flight from the moment they leave their house to when their plane is about to take off. It displays all relevant flight information and provides real-time updates of any status, traffic, gate, or terminal changes. The user simply has to input the flight number, airline, and date into their phone and the watch displays instructions of where to go/what to do next and sends notifications of any important changes. 2
Brainstorming 3
Brainstorming The generation of ideas is critical to the project because a variety of ideas, covering a breadth of different categories and a depth of ideas within the same category, is important in allowing team to find a good idea. The breadth and depth is achieved using the build and jump strategy that we used during our brainstorming process, which will be discussed in more detail. Through this process of generating an initial list of ideas, we then proceeded to decrease the number of potential ideas until we agreed upon our final idea, which continued to change throughout the process of the project. We began our brainstorming process on an open wall, where we wrote big picture ideas on post it notes. The build and jump process is demonstrated by how we used one idea as the inspiration for more potential applications in the same genre, and then branched out to another category when there seemed to be a lull in the creativity of ideas. For example, one of the first genre we considered were applications that extended from existing applications. Some potential ideas include a better way to schedule group meetings, a powerpoint clicker, and traffic updates. After coming up with ideas all within the same category, we branched to the category of food and expanded from that general idea to more specific ideas such as a cooking application, a dynamic grocery list, and a grocery price comparator. There were many ideas that were limited to the existing functionality of the Toq watch, while others assumed an imagination of the future smartwatch functionality. By the end of the brainstorming session, we had over 50 ideas spanning multiple genres. We narrowed our list of ideas, we first decided on a group goal, which was to choose an application that would be able to be implemented on the Toq Watch as much as possible. Based on our interest and hope to make an application that would be useful, we decided on a few ideas, and then chose one idea as a top choice. The initial top choice was the powerpoint clicker. 4
The brainstorming process allowed us to explore the many different potential ideas for a mobile application using both the smartphone and smartwatch. Through focusing our brainstorm list to a few ideas, we analyzed the pros and cons for each idea, involving aspects such as novelty, interest, and usability. In this way, we concluded with our final idea of a powerpoint clicker. However, this idea was later replaced by the airline application after feedback and more consideration. 5
Design Sketches 6
Design Sketches 7
Competitive Analysis 8
Competitive Analysis There are no shortage of flight tracking applications but none that assist the user from start to finish (from when they leave their house to when their plane is about to take off). Our three main competitors, Google Now, TripAdvisor, and FlightAware, all provide basic flight information but each has its own flaws that we attempted to eliminate in our application. Our biggest threat is Google Now and for obvious reasons: they are well established in the market and already have a huge user base. Furthermore, they integrate flight tracking with Android-based smartwatches which most other flight tracking applications don t do. However, they do not have many essential features such as notifying users to check-in 24 hours before their flight, showing wait times, and showing instructions of where to go within the airport, all of which are features that we have made or are in the process of making. Another competitor is TripAdvisor, which displays all the relevant flight information but does not have a watch interaction and does not provide real time notifications. This is a huge hindrance to businessmen who do not want to keep pulling their phones out of their pockets to check if their flight status, gate, or terminal number has changed. Similarly, FlightAware also displays relevant flight information but has not watch component (although they do update in real time and provide push notifications). However, they have extremely poor design and display irrelevant information making the application unaesthetic, cluttered, and not user friendly. A common theme among all the flight tracking applications we saw was that they simply list the basic information the user needs and does not do anything else to assist the user to get from their home to their plane. We are solving this problem by implementing useful features these other competitors have not which includes directions to get to the airport, check-ins, showing directions within the airport, and maybe in the future notifying friends, family, and/or co-workers of whether their plane is taking off or has just landed. Most importantly, most competing applications are 9
not integrated with a smartwatch so their users have to constantly pull out their phones and check for updates while our users simply get a vibration on their watch whenever anything noteworthy changes. We are able to implement all these features while still making the application s interface aesthetic, minimalistic, clean, and user-friendly. 10
Wireframes 11
Wireframes Adding Flight 12
Check Flight Status on Phone 13
Check Gate and Receive Gate Change Notification 14
Check Traffic 15
Personas 16
Personas Kevin is a 22-year-old management consultant living in New York City, New York. Having just graduated from college, he is in the process of slowly adjusting to the real world. He finds himself traveling on a weekly basis, since he works for a Fortune 500 client based out-of-state. Since he works heavy work weeks, he finds himself using his weekends to visit his college friends based all around the United States, so he visits a new airport each week. Flight Buddy has been crucial in helping him navigate through new airports so that he makes all of his flights on time. Amber is a 30-year-old manager in the entertainment industry living in Los Angeles, California. She has to fly often for meetings for her current project, something she has never done before, so she is not too familiar with the patterns within the airport. Probably the most stressful part about her flights are the unpredictable wait times. In order to get to LAX, she often has to deal with unpredictable LA traffic, and once at the airport, she dreads the wait time to get through security. Flight Buddy provides the wait time information necessary so that she can better plan her schedule even when she is not too familiar with the patterns. Karen is a 23-year-old college graduate who currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has decided to take some time in between applying to medical school to travel the world, so she finds herself taking many noncontinuous flights and traveling to new places on what is almost a daily basis. Since both her funds and her time are limited, she needs to make sure she does not miss any flights. Thus, when coordinating rides, she always checks the traffic conditions on Flight Buddy to ensure that she is able to make it to the airport on time. When in the airport, she also heavily utilizes the navigation feature to make it to her gate on time. Brandon is a 25-year-old traveling salesman living in Seattle, Washington. He travels to convention sites all throughout the year, bringing with him at 17
least two suitcases of goods. While he is has memorized the patterns and airport layouts to the sites he regularly travels to, he still finds it very inconvenient when there are sudden changes in the flight status or gate location. Out of caution, he always has to check the large departure signs or pull his phone out, which is a real inconvenience. With Flight Buddy, he now gets real-time notifications the moment any changes occur, and now he can travel more smoothly without having to put down all of his goods. Christina is a 45-year-old politician living in Washington, D.C. Her work has recently shifted from more domestic-related work to foreign affairs, so she finds herself flying internationally on a regular basis. She has limited foreign language experience, having lived in the United States her entire life, so she needs time to adjust to new environments. Luckily, Flight Buddy s navigation feature has helped her catch her flights in time even when she does not speak the native language. Jim is a 35-year-old tech executive living in Mountain View, California. He often finds himself commuting to visit the offices in Hong Kong and Bangalore, both of which do not always have direct flights. Since he also has to call in to the meetings back in Mountain View, he often finds it a hassle to be vigilant about changing gates and flight delays. Flight Buddy s notifications have been very useful for him, since he can now continue to work productively without having to interrupt his pace. 18
Scenarios 19
Scenarios For our Flight Buddy application, our team thought about which tasks best represented the interactions our users would want to make, and came up with three of the following scenarios: a user would need to input their flight information first if there are no previous flights saved, a user would want receive a notification if there is a gate change or a flight delay, and a user would like to check what the wait time is for the security gate line. In the first scenario, our businessman opens the application and arrives at the home page. Since there are not any previous flights inputted, the home page details would be empty. He then navigates to the search page, where he inputs the flight number and the name of the airline he is flying with. He clicks the Add Flight button and all the relevant information will appear on both the home screen as well as the the flight information page. The smartwatch also syncs with the phone immediately. This way, our businessman will be able to easily access pertinent information about the flight without having to go through the hassle of constantly pulling out his phone. In the second scenario, the businessman has already inputted his flight and is on the way to the airport. Upon hearing a notification from the watch, he opens it to see that there has been a gate change for his flight. If he checks his flight information, the original gate has already been updated to the new gate. This scenario is one of our high priority tasks because gate changes, or any other status changes such as delays, are unexpected and are always sources of concern for frequent fliers. Since the application updates in real-time, our users can be comforted to know that all the displayed information are accurate and up-to-date. In the last scenario, our businessman can check for wait times on his smartwatch. He opens the application on the watch and can select the wait times card. He can choose from either viewing the wait time at the security check line, baggage check line, and time until takeoff. Knowing 20
the wait times of various points in the check-in process can give our users an idea of how much time to buffer their schedules to ensure they catch their flight smoothly. The main goal of our application is to help our users stay informed. As a result, once the user inputs the flight information in the application, the remaining interactions are kept short and simple, providing only the most relevant information at any given time. 21
User Studies 22
User Studies The user studies for this application was conducted mostly as a the contextual inquiry and interviews at the start of the project to guide our initial designs. This user study provided valuable information in how the application would fit the needs of the target user group, which then guided our designs. The desire to be aware of the situation in terms of flight status and the decrease of interactions with other objects such as smart phones and information boards ultimately became the inspiration for the main functionalities of the Flight Buddy application. The user study began as a contextual inquiry of the target user group at the Oakland Airport, where we observed the user group in the context of arriving at the airport and leaving the airport. There were many difficulties that limited the contextual inquiry such as the not being able to observe the target user group through the whole process of leaving their home and arriving at the airport due to the anonymous nature of the user study. Also, there was difficulty in observing their process past the security gates. However, these two gaps in observation were addressed through the interview process. The interviews revealed that the users had multiple ways of arriving at the airport which constituted mostly of being picked up and dropped off by friends or Uber because of comfort and ease. The users sometimes drove themselves when the business trips were one or two days long. Public transportation was almost not used. Due to this wide range, we decided to focus our application not on the transportation to the airport, but on information that would give the user more ease no matter which mode of transportation they take such as knowing terminal at which their airline is located. Their current use of smartphones included checking in, checking departure gate and time, checking for flight status, using the phone as a boarding pass, playing games to pass wait times, and coordinating pick up times. The wait times are of primary concern to the user because its uncertainty cause stress and many user to waste time by 23
going to the airport unnecessarily early, while others take the gamble to arrive at the airport right on time to go through security and reach departure gate right before the gate closes. From the observations, it is evident that people tend to carry their cell phones in hand or in a bag but constantly reach for it for various reasons. Looking for the right gate on the information board takes an unnecessary amount of time to scan through the entire detailed list. People are hurrying to get through security. From the user study, it is evident that users will appreciate a quick and easy way to check information. Notifications of changes will reduce the stress and possibility of missed flights. The specific target user group have also responded positively to having a smartwatch for convenience and a fashion statement. The user study has informed and inspired our initial design, but more user study throughout the process of the project would have been beneficial to help with the finer details of the application through their feedback. 24
Final Design 25
Final Design Adding Flight on Phone 26
Check Status and Weather 27
Notifications on Qualcomm Toq 28
Directions to the Boarding Gate within the Airport 29
Technical Challenges 30
Technical Challenges We faced numerous technical challenges when creating this application on both the smartwatch and phone. These problems include (1) retrieving flight information in a timely manner, (2) providing real-time updates, (3) modularizing the code, (4) implementing check-ins, and (5) creating a database of all airlines. Some of these problems were completely solved, some had alternative solutions, and others could not be completed due to time constraints. (1): We improved our real-time characteristic of our application by trying out various APIs and adding shortcuts for well-known flights (United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest, Delta Airlines, etc) but adding a flight is still not as quick as we d like it to be. (2): This was not a trivial task because we had to determine which flight the user wanted real-time updates for. We also had to determine if the value(s) that changed were significant enough to notify the user. In the end, we were successfully able to get data from our API and the web in real time. (3): Modularizing the code to divide work among teammates proved to be difficult because our application is so tightly integrated (for example, the home, flight description, and saved searches pages all depend on the output of the flight query). Each of us assumed that we would be provided with certain values from another team member but sometimes we were not specific enough in detailing what information we would pass to each other which caused some confusion. However, after specifically defining what each of us needed, all the classes and methods combined well. (4): This proved to be more difficult than we anticipated because we assumed that all airlines readily provided their check-in QR codes but unfortunately most didn t. If we were to make this an actual product we 31
would have tried to meet with some of the airlines and ask if we could have permission to integrate their check-in system with ours. (5): This would have been useful for having autocomplete when adding a flight. Unfortunately, setting up a database in Android and then adding all the airlines required a bigger time commitment than we could handle so we were not able to implement it on time, but it would have been a useful feature if we had more time. 32
Summary 33
Summary The goal of FlightBuddy is to make the journey from a user s house to their plane as seamless as possible. We provide flyers with an application that helps them get to the airport, gives them step by step instructions of how to navigate it, and alerts them if their flight information changes. The user simply has to enter their flight number, airline, and date and FlightBuddy takes care of the rest. The process of flying and navigating airports can be a stressful and confusing experience. We solve this problem by listing all relevant information in a clean, user-friendly way, providing succinct instructions, and letting our application do most of the work. Flyers are frequently concerned that they are not going to catch their flight on time or that their flight information has unexpectedly changed. Currently, the only solution is to pull out their phones and verify that everything is in order (traffic to the airport, flight status, gate, terminal, etc). We provide a better solution by integrating with the Toq smartwatch which vibrates and sends a notification whenever something noteworthy happens. In addition, users will be able to get directions to the airport, can check in, and get directions inside the airport. The individuals we talked to in our user studies seemed excited about our product and said it would be extremely useful in helping them catch their flights. The hassle of catching flights is universal and we believe that we have simplified the process by adding many useful features while maintaining good design principles. 34
FlightBuddy 35