Extra Hand on Demand is an in-airport product and service delivery system for parents traveling with young children. Controlled by an easy to use (sometimes parents only have one spare hand) digital website.
Each airport terminal has two runners who can interact with the user through a mobile platform getting them their delivery in just a few minutes. Parents can order packages containing child and baby needs, food and tech accessories. Payment is taken care of at the time of delivery by card so the runner can go off to save the next parent in need.
My Role: Design research, concept development, storyboard, interaction flow and UX
Team: Aaron Cook, Gordon Grado, Chaemin Ahn, Sara Tashakorinia. Working under the guidance of April Starr.
The challenge
Designers with no kids
No one in the team had kids. How does a group of designers who don't even have an experience to fly with kids design something for parents? We had to understand what kids and parents go through before, during and after the flight.
Additionally, airport as a research space was not very designer-friendly. After visiting O’Hare airport, we found out the space that we could conduct research was highly restricted. Also, after talking to two parents, we quickly realised that shadowing or talking to parents in the airport before or after their flight would not be the best way to get meaningful information.
Our approach
Interview, Prototype and Validate.
When it comes to research and observations, airports are not the most designer-friendly and easiest. Since the research space we could use was restricted, our strategy was to cover the unreachable area with what people say. This did’t mean that we would neglect field research, but there was a risk that we might miss the sense of place and micro interactions happening in there.
We conducted 12 interviews with parents who had experience flying with kids. First 6 was to explore the space we’re getting into. Since we didn’t even know what we didn’t know, we talked to the first 3 people in a group. After we got to the point where we had the initial concept, we built rapid prototypes and did simulation with interviewees for iteration.
Our vision
Make it less painful
We were not devoted to magically change the whole experience beautiful at once. We focused on the airport, more specifically on the terminal area. Terminal is where something that kids are usually quite bad at happens. Waiting. And when kids run out of their patience, that's the point when the experience turns into something the parents need to endure.
Our vision was to support parents who are already enduring, in a way that what we provide doesn’t feel like an additional burden.
Concept ideation & mapping them on 'stages of travel'
Our solution
Extra Hand On Demand
An in-airport package delivery service for parents flying with kids. Through a mobile website, parents can order 4 different packages: baby pack, kid pack, snack pack and battery pack.
How & why we got to this idea.
We started with a concept that will support parents by doing small tasks for the parents so that they could focus on taking care of their kids. After listing possible tasks, we found that most of them were buying things. We could see the process getting complicated very easily if there were multiple things to get. We wanted to make it more simple, and came up with the package idea.
Validation
“Woo..a paper box…Well that’s a no-no."
When we ran simulations with parents, they liked the overall scenario except for one thing. In the simulation, when delivering package we used a paper box to put the stuffs in. All of them hated the box so much.We the realized that we neglected the fact that parent’s hands are full.
We made a service blueprint to clarify details within each interaction.
During user research we learned that kids in different age groups need different things and the thing the need are extremely hard to get in the airport. We then designed 2 age groups and developed the package according to specific needs. Adding to that, we made a package that is consisted with snacks parents and kids could share. Lastly, we made a package that only has extra battery and water.
How do we make money
We looked at Orlando airport, 38m passengers through MCO annually and estimate of 4.3 million are travelers with children under 7. Targeting 1% market penetration our estimate is to have 43K packs sold annually which generates $8k profit in the first year by only targeting parent traveling with children under 7 years old and $989k profit from sales of power and snack packs to general travelers.
