KLM disruption handling
Mar 2017 - ongoing
Graduation project about improving passenger experience with disruption handling through proactive information design for KLM.
The problem..
Currently the handling of delays that occur within an hour prior to the departure is very poor. Passengers are informed only by the screens of the airport and sometimes by the announcements at the gates. That results to negative feelings like anger, frustration and disappointment.
By conducting a user research on the emotions of the passengers, it was revealed that passengers seek for honest and transparent information by the airline. If they are offered this kind of information, they are ready to empathise with the airline company.
The approach..
An alarm philosophy was created in which 4 levels of criticality were identified. The criticality was measured according to how important or how urgent is the action that needs to be made by the passenger. In other words how high should the actionability of the passenger be.
The four levels should derive certain emotions in order to trigger certain behaviours:
- No urgency: passenger feels calm
- Low urgency: passenger feels intrigued
- Medium urgency: passenger feels involved
- High urgency: passenger feels alert.
According to the level of urgency, the main elements of the message are changing, the notification sound, the colour and the quick links on the tap bar.
Accounting a delay is delivering bad news. Thus, the structure of the message and the menu of the application are based on the “delivering bad news in a corporate environment” theory of the management studies.
My Delay
“My Delay” is a communication system based on the KLM mobile application, which is activated personally for each passenger when a disruption occurs. It is created with the goal to deal with disruption in a smooth and user centred way. “My Delay” aims to make the passengers feel in control of the situation, less angry and assist them to make the most of their time.
