Because of course everyone who goes through every airport knows which app to get for each airport, and thinks to install it in advance. My mother can barely use her phone as it is, just as a phone. Not everyone lives in the smart phone/watch power user tech bubble.
> Because of course everyone who goes through every airport knows which app to get for each airport, and thinks to install it in advance.
Which would easily be solved by having actual standards rather than even considering that 'which app to get for each airport' should be a phrase we'd consider uttering. Then you could use a phone or watch or laptop or tablet or a kiosk.
She probably carries a paper boarding pass with all the info she needs, and probably hasn’t registered her face with the airline either.
Start with the early adopters and then broaden into the early majority…your mum will be at the other end of that bell curve. This is classic Crossing the Chasm stuff.
A paper pass won’t tell her when the plane is ready to board, or whether to go left or right. Registering for the display board is done at the airport, they offer you the option and you scan your pass and look at the camera. That’s it.
I’m not saying don’t offer an app, but it baffles me that you think they should not offer this.
Your mother has a workflow that she’s presumably used for many decades. (I used to use it too): paper boarding pass and look up your flight(/train whatever) on the schedule board. That system will continue to work (for her and for me).
So when introducing a new feature set consider who your adopter audience will be. When think of my own mother she wouldn’t bother to register her face (but does demand a paper BP). She doesn’t want to change her work flow, though she does use her phone for more than calling.
I on the other hand, am willing (even interested) in changing to make my life simpler. Im not saying “make gumby’s life better” specifically, but that effort would be better spent on infrastructure.
BTW though I wasn’t clear, I wasn’t thinking of an airline-specific app, but on in-terminal localization that would interact with my map software in a privacy-protecting way. Delta’s gimmick is not privacy protecting (what happens to that face registration?)
In reality my mothers work flow at an airport is, do what the nice airport staff say. If that’s scan your pass here and look at the camera there, that’s what she’ll do. These are familiar things to do anyway, you have to scan passports and passes already, and immigration control takes your camera, so they’re things she already knows how to do and there are people right there to help.
In any case Delta’s gonna do what they want, as will our respective mums, but at least we had a good discussion of product design and marketing criteria which actually is kind of HN-appropriate.
