Toronto Pearson Information Kiosks

An omni-channel experience allowed passengers to view content on the kiosk on their smartphone by loading the equivalent page on torontopearson.com via a QR Code. This allows passengers to easily load everything from flight details to POIs on their personal devices. Directions to POI's can also be loaded on a passengers smartphone, allowing them to easily navigate either terminal.

As each kiosk was designed to be location aware, we were able to develop several features to allow people to contextualize themselves within their terminal. For POIs, the walking distance was displayed for each restaurant or shop. So if a passenger is searching for a Starbucks, they're quickly able to discover which of 11 is closest to them. Content is customized for departures and arrivals, with the quick links providing access to the most common tasks for departing or arriving passengers.

 

That's a quick overview of a deeply complex project which integrates into dozens of internal APIs and third-party tools to deliver a really unique experience to travellers.

. The development team was then able to build the kiosk to meet Defining broad. An accessible keypad is used to navigate the kiosk using a built-in screen reader. 

Along with reduced height mode we had to address the needs of passengers who may be deaf, visually impaired or have mobility issues. Every interaction had to provide both visual and audible feedback, and avoid complex hand gestures. 

Informational videos on the kiosk would require closed captions and described video. This required sourcing a custom video player that supported these additional 

Working with our manufacuring partner, teh displays were able to support prothestic limbs.

. On screen button's click, barcode scanners signal success through sound and lights. 

Omnichannel

Mapping. How it can be helpful for Lowes

Video and audio chat.

Torontopearson.com · Project Background · Website key features: · Arrivals information · Departures information · Live Security wait times · Website search · Live flight notifications · Live bus schedules · Live train schedules · Taxi and Limo fare calculator · Online Gift card purchase · Chatbot · Kiosk- torontopearson.com · Technology Stack · Server Architecture – Website built using Sitecore XP Scaled · Micro services Architecture · Delivery Model – Azure DevOps · Question and Answers.

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GTAA kiosk Intro

As GTAA's existing wayfinding kiosks had reached their end of life, GTAA had multiple goals for the new kiosk's we were designing. They needed to expand beyond wayfinding, by driving traffic to POI's with more detailed information  (menu's, external websites), enhance the customer support experience with video and audio connections to Passenger Support Reps, provide passengers with customized flight information, and allow GTAA the flexibility to deploy new capabilities over the next 5 years.

About the team

Our team of 3 was tasked with developing an effective user experience for multiple layers of ever increasing complexity. As we worked together over those first few weeks, our complementary set of skills allowed us to share the workload and support each other when we hit roadblocks. Ankita provided solid visual and UX skills to work well within our constraints, Shubhangi offered solid user research skills and a natural intuitiveness to see simple solutions. I brought understanding of accessibility, development processes, and general UX/UI experience. 

Explaining the importance of design process

GTAA stakeholders on the project varied in their knowledge of user experience design. In our early workshops and meetings we introduced or refreshed their team to concepts and the process of using design thinking to their team. We quickly discovered that holding rigorously to the traditional double-diamond/design thinking processes would not work with this project due to tight timelines, Covid 19, and more. 

Discover

One of the biggest challenges we encountered at the beginning of the project (and throughout) was the lack of availability for user interviews with travellers. Due to a variety of reasons (Covid-19 being the primary) we had to focus on stakeholder interviews and utilizing what existing research we had available to us.

Secondary Research - Existing Site

Ankita and Shubhangi began by creating a detailed IA of TorontoPearson.com which would form the basis for the new kiosks. That IA allowed us to begin to develop a detailed picture of the requirements that were only broadly referenced in the BRD as well as highlight the complexity of torontopearson.com itself.

Secondary Research - Habenero

A key win for the our team was discovering that during the redesign of torontopearson.com two years prior, the contractor, Habenero, had performed detailed user interviews, user journey's, and personas of visitors to tp.com. While we would have preferred to research that information first hand, there was a clearly a great deal of overlap between the research Habenero had conducted and our project. Their user flows nearly matched those we had begun to develop, and even highlighted possible kiosk interactions in many of the same points that we'd identified. It provided a much needed shortcut that allowed us to validate much of our preconceptions.

Secondary Research - Online reviews

With no current access to travellers, we explored every avenue to collect qualitative information on people who had interacted with the airport. Online reviews identified pain points around wayfinding and other areas that we could address within the kiosk

Primary Research - On-site visit

We were able to successfully convince the client of the benefit of an on-site visit. During the visit we used the existing kiosks, noting several key features. The POEMS framework was used to documents the terminal and how travellers interacted with the space within.

Define

After our initial research we began to synthesize the data

Research Synthesis - Persona's

Habenero had developed 7 traveller archetypes which were incorporated into our work. We understood that end-users of an airport can be anyone, so we developed an additional 3 personas which focused on edge cases. This allowed us to repeatedly consider the impact of our decisions on these rarer travellers personas. The team's experiences with airports also proved helpful and helped us to avoid biases in our assumptions. I had travelled regularly, where Shubhangi had never flown beforehand.

Research Synthesis - User Journey's and work flows

We had begun development of the our user journeys when we received the journeys developed by Habenero. The significant level of overlap between the two helped to validate the teams thinking. 

Research Synthesis - Primary flows and global elements

The BRD set a very broad scope for the projects goals. Our research allowed us to narrow this down to 12 key flows that would be carried over from torontopearson.com to the kiosk.

Research Synthesis - Documenting Complexity

Design Concepts - Client Workshop & Info Architecture

With a tight timeline, the team held workshops with GTAA to better prioritize the individual components of key pages (CHANGE SLIDE) as well as the broader flows. From these sessions we broke the project into 2 phases, prioritizing key passenger features such as flight information on a shorter timeline. Secondary flows such as detailed POIs, video/audio calls would be released later. While a difficult discussion with GTAA, we were able to deliver the initial release in the original timeline and reduce the workload for both the design and development teams.

Design Concepts - Divergence and Convergence

Design Concepts - Wireframes

Design System

Given the large number of screens that needed to be designed, over 300 screens across two orientations along with English and French. Developing a shared design system was necessary to reduce errors and minimize manual updates. Adobe XD's shared library feature was invaluable, if occasionally buggy. One issue we encountered was determining if a one-off element should be included in the design system. As we worked through the design, those one-off elements would regularly be reused elsewhere. This required rework once we created the shared component and replaced the old instances with the new. Multiple XD plugins were tried to automate this process, but none worked well or consistently enough to be used.

UI Design

Internal Validation & Prototyping

Given the sheer physical size of the kiosks we were able to obtain a 55"  and 32" touch screen for internal testing and prototyping. This let us quickly test and iterate on the layout of elements internally. Guerilla user testing with the real-world screens allowed us to validate the visual hierarchy and flows of the experience.

Final deliverables

The phase 2 release of the kiosks went live in May 2022. Passengers can now search for restaurants, get directions to them, scanning their boarding pass for details about their flight, call GTAA agents for support, and even more. All of these capabilities can also be used by passengers who are visually impaired, deaf, wheelchair bound, or have other mobility issues. Currently the kiosks are the Phase 2 kiosks are getting over 6000 pageviews per day, a 600% increase over the Phase 1 deployment.

Identifying user needs

Primary Research – User Interviews