2018
UX & UI
Mobile App
Solo

Horizon is a fictitious airline that provides a service that picks you up and drops you off from and to airports using autonomous vehicles.  

The main objective of this project was to identify a problem in one of the transportation industry and find a solution that is both seamless and effective.

Airports are generally chaotic places where the curb-to-gate journey can be confusing and full of unpleasant interactions for everyone.

We continually struggle through the inconsistency of the way we travel as there is a disconnect from Home to Airport to Airport to Final Destination. 

According to Lonely Planet, international travel is set to rapidly increase by 35% over the next decade. With this in mind, it would be problematic if the system in airports we currently have stays as is.

Airlines to provide a pick up and drop off service using autonomous vehicles for its customers.

As technology continues to rapidly develop in our society, the goal is to take advantage and integrate them into our systems in order to help solve problems. There has especially been a rapid development in AVs (autonomous vehicles) in the recent years. Although it’s still no where near complete assimilation with our everyday lives, the goal is to head towards that direction.

There has been a substantial amount of case studies regarding the research on AVs and their prospects. Aside from being more efficient and environmentally healthy with the reduction of road congestion and transportation costs, I found an insight that there is a potential increase of “free” time inside self-driving cars.

With this in mind, I thought of what could be done during this time in the vehicle in regards to travel.

There’s nothing new about checking in through smartphones and having electronic boarding passes anymore. These features were developed in order to avoid to long qeues at the airport. But what can’t really be avoided right now is dealing with our luggages. The check in qeues might easily be skipped but not the ones regarding our bags. 

I started breaking it up by main events and the interactions within them through the whole journey of Home-Airport-Airport-Destination. 

On the home page, details on the upcoming flight and pick up service are displayed as the primary information. The menu below consists of four other pages:

My Flights
My Pick Ups
Track My Bags
My Profile

On the day of the flight, customers will be notified regarding their pick up service and can track its progress. 

Since these vehicles don’t have drivers or any people to monitor who comes and goes, a quick tap of the phone using NFC (near-field communication) onto a scanner that already knows and expects who to pick up will be the way to enter the vehicle.

Once inside the vehicle, the check in of the customer’s flight will become available through the app as well as an electronic boarding pass. 

Going back to the insight I found of the potential increase of free time in AVs (and most likely a change of the vehicle’s interior layout), a printer would be installed inside to print customers’ luggage tags.

With the information Horizon has on who will be taking which flights, the autonomous vehicles used will directly deliver customers’ luggage straight to the planes to store after arriving at the airport.

“How do I get to my hotel?” can be a question we ask ourselves that triggers slight anxiety when in a different city/country. More often than not, there is an immediate barrier of the difference in systems, language, and culture as soon as the plane lands. Horizon is my solution to connect the disconnected parts of travelling in and out of airports.

Following through the luggage drop off service, upon arrival customers are able to track their bags prior to entering their AV service at the airport. With a map to locate a vehicle assigned to each customer, following through the same process of entering using NFC.

The last touchpoint of the journey consists of a discovery page full of suggestions in the area of the final destination as more time opens up without all the flight check ins.