Re-imagining the Boarding Pass

In a team of two for a two week project, we re-imagined the visual design of the boarding pass to improve the experience of the passengers, tsa agents, and the airline staff.

Identifying the users

The Delta boarding pass contains a lot of information that can be overwhelming. Through developing the user's persona and use cases,(affinity analysis), We focused on three primary group of users - passengers, tsa agents, and airline staffs and layed out information that are needed by each groups of users. Passenger Name Flight Number Gate Number Departure, Arrival Time of Departure Baggage Information Class, Seat Number, Zone Bar Code, Confirmation Number





To further identify the needs and demands of each users, we developed user personas and use scenarios. We identified the passengers as ranging in various travel experience and needs: frequent business travelers, first time traveler, elderly, family with children. Through this, we identified the following problems that could hinder various users.

1) Information are not organized and hard to find
2) Flight ticket do not inform the process of the travel
3) Flight ticket is difficult to hold and show with a passport

Design explorations

The first design sketches focused on providing clear hierarchy and structure of information.



The second iteration of design sketches explores the usage of visual icons and flow to provide guidance along the travel process.



While visual icons can provide information, too much icons can end up as a distraction. So we reduced the number of icons and guides



After a few rounds of iteration, we arrived to our final design that also considers usability through a vertical layout.

Final design

Lessons Learned

What I learned is that prioritizing the goals and needs of the users are important for making design decisions. Also, there is no one size fits all type of design since all design decisions can lead to different consequences. Future work would be on user testing and iteractions on the design.