Apple Wallet Passes

Digitalized boarding passes that saves time and resources.  

While scrambling to dig out my printed boarding pass from my bag at the airport during a family trip over the summer, I noticed (in jealousy) that a lot of people are calmly pulling up their boarding passes on their iPhones and scanning them as they went through security.

After some googling, I found out that you can add your boarding pass to your iPhone’s Apple Wallet, which saves you printing time at check-in and also it’s a win for the environment.

Current Passes

The information displayed on current boarding passes feels cluttered, making it hard to quicky extract important information from the pass. 

While the current boarding passes provide all the necessary information the passenger will need, it is lacking in usability because of its poor information hierarchy and layout. Important information like flight number, departure time, and passenger name are all cluttered on the top of the pass, leaving unnecessary white space on the bottom of the pass.

Iteration 1

I explored highlighting important information like flight number, boarding time, and seat number by putting them into visually prominent boxes for better scannability.

Usability Issues

Through user testing, I discovered usability issues with my design including the placement of gate number and the size of flight time text

I tested this design with 6 participants by asking them to search for information that is present on the boarding pass, paying close attention to their response time. 

What went right:

• box display of information perceived as clear and intuitive

• the minimalistic design feels modern

What went wrong:

• participants had trouble finding the gate on the boarding pass, which is located in the upper right corner

• participants expressed that they wish the flight time is a bit more prominent

Iteration 2

Wait, who’s the real user?

In the previous iteration, I was subconsciously designing for two users: the passenger and the airport staff.

However, I had a moment of revelation while working on the next iteration that all useful information about the passenger the security staff will need is encapsulated in the QR code, meaning that the passenger should be the “real” users of this design. This opens the door to a personalized design for the passenger.

Therefore, in addition to addressing the problems that came up during the usability test, I dived deeper into “designing for the passenger”.