Pick an airport you are familiar with. How would you improve it?

PS: I will not put many pauses here unlike I would in a real interview. Interviewer might be noted as I. I will assume answers and cut out commentary. I may segway from official framework depending on how I naturally see the flow in my mind.

Me: Are we focused on big airports or small airports? I assume that we would like to improve airport in general. (Correct)

Me: Are we focused on solved certain aspects of an airport? (No, you tell me what you want to improve. That is the question).

Me: Correct. Just wanted to confirm. Also, can we assume US since I am most familiar with this country? (Sure)

Me: Are we focusing on improving user journey within an airport itself or could also include experience of getting to the airport or boarding the plane / flying? (Airport experience in itself).

Me: And are we trying to improve / design an airport of the future for a specific set of users? (No; you tell me what makes sense).

Me: Also, I am sorry but I thikn 1 last question as I try and clarify our understanding and scope. We are trying to "improve" you said so that means there is a reason we are pursuing such discovery. Do we have user data such as complaint logs, survey data, etc. that can help guide what could be some pain points? (No).

Me: Is our intention to improve "user experience" in general or are we focused on improve frequence of flyers to the airport or monetizing from the airport for the city? (You tell me).

Me: Let's focus on improving user experience in general. I think doing taht is ultimately going to help with improving user flow to the aiport and hence monetization as well. In general, I would want to lean towards providing a futuristic experience to travellers hence attracting them more and solving a major concern I often hear "I hate flying. It's such a pain".

Interviewer: Sure. Sounds great. If you may, I think we should jump to some improvements.

Me: I would like to think of who my travellers might be first since I think understanding our users may be valuable here. I think people who use airports are usually:

1) Infrequent travellers

2) Frequence travellers

3) Employees who work at the airport (airline employees let's say)

4) Vendors

5) TSA agents

I think it's best to focus on infrequent travellers since I think that's most of US population. Additionally, the rest of the user segments are so used to the airport that current processes don't bother them at all and it's become a day in day out for them. I do have 1 more question....when we want to improve airport, did you mean to want to improve it for people who are going there for purpose of flying in/out? I am not sure if I was aligned with you when I listed some non-traveller group above.  

Interviewer: traveller is fine for now.

Me: Thanks. In real life, I would conduct some user studies (maybe in person, surveys, offical data collection from various sources, etc.) to better understand their pain / needs. But for now let's say our infrequent user mainly faces issues like: 1)security is painful 2)lines are long for check-in counter, security, etc. 3)baggage claim wait is painful.

I think we should try and address all wholistically since all of them are quite painful to someone who doesn't travel as much. Overall, I am trying to address a user journey of getting to the airport through security.

1)Currently it's painful to have to wait in TSA line just for TSA agent to have to check your ID and boarding pass to pass you through. It's difficult especially with kids to manage them and take out ID and then not drop it somewhere and put it back. I have myself lost an ID this way at EWR. I envision a hardware/software product whereby there may be high speed scanning cameras at entrance door. You have an app on your cell that merges or has boarding passes from all airlines. There also is a facail recognition camera at an angle in front of you at a certain distance (maybe angle down from top) and matches your face with your name and identify in DB and your boarding pass and validates you. This automatically checks you in and airline gets the data that you have checked in. This would mean as soon as I walk into an airport, I am checked in and I don't have to necessarily wait in long TSA lines for that. Yes, there may still be lines for securiy but I think those line would move faster since there is no TSA agent that has to check every person's ID and boarding pass physically which does slow down the process quite a bit.

2)I think above solution would also help with security in the sense that if a terrorist walks into an airport with boarding pass, maybe gets on a plane with devices and then gets out of another airport (connection flight) maybe then there is arecord of who got out and when device activated. This is prob crazy but I think it may help. I am not sure if this adds value since currently if the passenger doesnt board the next flight, that data is availale except that each airline maintains their own data. This solution, however, keeps all data centralized since this tech is not airport owned by maybe federally managed.

3)Also, older people and people with little kids find it extremely difficult to manage tedious security process. We should have security scanning capability for luggage whereby I go through an xray sacanning device with my luggage as I enter the aiport and suspicions beep immediately. This may help us eliminte security lines completely.

4)Currently I have to use kiosk to pinrt boarding pass and print bag tag. I have to enter so much details in the kiosk and it takes up time. Myabe there is a QR code on my cell phone app that once I point that at the kiosk, I get my bag tags / boarding passes printed!

I think #2 is merely a use case so nothing to implement there maybe atleast from a feature standpoint. I do think that #1 is way more prominent of a pain point than what #4 addresses. #3 I thikn is rare. Given all that, I think Value add to user is 5 (1-5; 5 being the highest), Complexity is 4 (given we need to implement high scanning devices, considering what to do if oddity is scanned and waht to do and how to take action if let's say inaccurate data is captured, etc.). I also think that if this is implemented successfully, it would improve user experience of using the airport so much that airport will see higher retention (people will choose this airport vs. other nearby ones due to smoother and quicker user journey) and this will lead to increased monetization since more vendors will also want to conduct business there. There are other challenges with this solution in the sense what if these devices mal-function? WE also need to thikn of operational aspects to implement these tech in practical life.

I would like to add a 5th solution that comes to mind if that's ok:

5) Lot of people get to airport really early since they are freaked out that security line would be too long and they would miss their flight. Often though, I think people waste too much time at airport doing nothing. I think this is part of user frustration too since I have often heard people say "I hate to fly. It just takes so much time. You get there 2 hours early, then you land and it takes you good 15-20 min sometimes to dock and then another 20 min to get out of hte airport, etc." So maybe we could implement devices that monitor security lane and braodcast it live 24x7. It would also have ML implemented to calculate and project based on historical data how long one could expect to wait in security lane (each one). This way people will leave at proper time from home and not get to airport too soon.

I do think this adds avlue to the user, however, I still think my #1 solution has a higher value for an infrequent traveler who finds the "waiting in TSA line" one of the most frustrating experience.

Me: Any questions?

Interviewer: No this is good. Anything else you would like to share?
Me: Yes, I think from a launch perspective we would have to roll this out strategically whereby maybe we start with smaller less busy airport and see how it works. Conduct user interviews on spot to capture their emotions (negative and positive), measuring how much it helped increase people motivation to fly in/out of that airport, etc .Sure that's measuring the success but it's also helps out in a continous launch planning across other airports. In terms of further measuring success, I think should be over QTR for enough data collection, we could measure # of travellers who visit the airport >1 , % of travellers who picked this airport vs. other one.

As we gather data we should continously analyze it and maybe based on that we may even tweak what we measure.

All in all, I think implementing some automated solutions for infrequent traveller to address their main concern about security being a pain at the airport, will help us achieve greater enhanced user experience, increased retention of taht airport and thereby increased monetization.