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.
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?)