Connections
A dynamic, context-aware product that prioritizes information in real time to guide customers through their airport journey.
01 - Overview
A high-priority moment, designed for time pressure.
Connecting between flights is one of the most time-sensitive moments in air travel. Customers must quickly interpret gate changes, walking distance, and boarding status—often with little clarity on what to do next.
I led design for the Connections experience, a dynamic, context-aware product that prioritizes information in real time to guide customers through their airport journey.
Missed connections drive operational cost (rebooking, vouchers, lost revenue) and degrade the customer experience—making this a high-priority initiative.
Role
Senior Product Designer
Timeline
Nov 2025 – Present (MVP launching Q2 2026)
Team
Product, engineering, Atrius (mapping), design system
02 - context
The problem isn't a lack of information.
It’s a lack of prioritization under time pressure.
Fragmented across apps, signage, and agents.
Customers rely on multiple sources to answer: Where do I go? Will I make my flight? What should I do if something changes? The result is stress, last-minute decisions, and heavy reliance on staff.
End-to-end experience design.
Partnered with product and engineering to define product direction, IA, and roadmap. Owned experience design, research, and interaction patterns. Influenced product direction, roadmap, cross-product patterns, and design system adoption.
What research told us
100 participants (UserZoom, mixed methods) showed the issue wasn’t lack of information—it was lack of prioritization under time pressure.
X
Urgency is driven by walking time vs. boarding time
70%+
prioritized gate, route, and walking time
80%+
would self-serve with clear, actionable guidance
X
Early awareness of delays is critical for planning
This is a dynamic decision environment, not a linear flow.
03 — Framing & Strategy
The right information, at the right moment.
The goal isn’t to provide more information — it’s to prioritize the right information at the right moment.
Principles
Prioritize for urgency.
Time-pressured states surface what’s actionable now; everything else recedes.
Reduce cognitive load.
Fewer competing signals. One clear next step at any given moment.
Enable immediate action.
Navigation, boarding pass, and rebooking are always one tap away.
Design for variability.
Trips differ in tightness, complexity, and stakes. The system must flex.
Urgency = walking time ÷ remaining boarding time
Exploration features visible
Time emphasized · suggestions in-route
Navigation = primary · noise removed
From connection to whole journey.
While MVP focuses on connections, the system was designed to scale across the full journey — from departure (security, bag drop) to arrival (baggage claim, exit).
04 — Decisions & Tradeoffs
Holding the layout still while shifting emphasis.
Each decision traded one kind of complexity for another. We optimized for customer clarity, not system simplicity.
Inspiration imagery
Removed imagery to reduce noise in high-stress scenarios. Applied it to other products instead.
Geolocation tracker
Deferred due to technical constraints but designed for future integration.
Multi-flight navigation
Explored nested selectors for multi-flight navigation, but testing showed confusion.
05 — Solution
A dynamic, context-aware experience.
It surfaces the right information at the right time.
Primary card.
Surfaces gate, status, walking time, and boarding window — always anchored to the active flight.
Navigation.
Direct access to turn-by-turn directions via Atrius, surfaced as urgency rises.
Amenities.
Coffee, restrooms, lounges. Cards rotate based on time of day and journey phase. At final destination, baggage claim and shuttles take the front.
How it shifts over time
Pre-departure.
Preparation — security wait, bag drop, gate awareness.
Connection.
Navigation + urgency. Walking time and gate take focus.
Arrival.
Next steps. Baggage, ground transport, exit guidance.
Validation
Tested with 8 participants in Admirals Club lounges, capturing real-time behaviors during actual connections.
Fast, glanceable guidance is the job.
Customers wanted quick read, not deep browse.
Time-to-gate is the anchor.
Reinforced as the single most-watched value on the screen.
Preferred over external tools.
Users chose this experience over ad-hoc maps to navigate the airport.
Auto-refresh + "last updated" indicator.
Added to increase trust in the real-time data layer. When numbers move, people need to see when they moved.
06 — Impact
Operational and systemic outcomes.
Expected outcomes
Misconnect rates & HMT cost.
Reduced operational cost by helping customers make the connection without intervention.
Self-service.
Reduced reliance on gate agents during peak connection windows.
NPS.
Improved by reducing uncertainty in the most stressful part of the journey.
Systems impact
Dynamic prioritization model.
Introduced across the product org as a shared way to think about state-aware UI.
Reusable design-system patterns.
Progress tracker adopted in flight tracking; interaction patterns reused across surfaces.
Adaptive design as a posture.
Helped shift the team toward state-aware, adaptive design as the default mental model.
Reflection
Designing for variability is more effective than designing for completeness.
Static experiences increase cognitive load; adaptive systems reduce user effort and operational dependency. A key misstep was overloading the interface early on — reinforcing the need for prioritization over volume.