Welcome

Hello and welcome aboard 💺

I've been enamoured with aviation ever since my first step aboard an airplane. Growing up in Singapore, family holidays always meant the opportunity to leave the ground, and I've been very lucky to have parents who've shared their wanderlust with me from a young age. It's in my blood, I always tell people, since my parents met sharing a bus route home from work--mom was a Singapore Girl, and dad was an engineer at Singapore's Changi Airport.

Like many of you, I've done my fair share of trawling through the depths of FlyerTalk, watching hours of flight reviews on YouTube, and reading about all the ways to accumulate and spend miles. The avgeek community is so good at digging into the inner workings of the industry, that it can actually highlight the magic of an experience rather than spoiling the surprise.

I've often felt, however, that these views and reviews are too broad, covering various aspects of the journey of the customer, but not actually digging into the customer's journey – indeed, what does it mean to experience the airline you're flying with?

Flying for me is special adventure. I don’t get to do it as often as other avgeeks, nor do I frequently get to travel in premium classes. So when I do, I'm always excited to discover new seat innovations, fiddle with buttons--both physical and digital--and immerse myself into the vibe crafted by scents, textures, lighting and design.

But reality can sometimes fall short of the promise of 3D renderings and marketing videos. When buttons don't do what you want, compartments not where you'd expect, and surfaces jut out at the wrong angles, knocking over a precariously placed glass can really dampen a luxury experience. Usability flaws and ill-conceived design decisions are some of the most jarring disruptions to the wonder of flight.

In my day job, I code user interfaces for software companies, so obsessing about the way a human interacts with a system is an occupational hazard that seeps into all aspects of my life. When I first discovered Norman doors, my entire world view changed--since everything in modern life was designed by someone, analysing how we interact with everything can provide unique insights into how the human mind works!

I tend to travel with my Macbook Pro with its massive charging brick, and a universal travel charger that frankly deserves a spot on the Transformers line up.

The first hurdle is always just locating the power outlet at the seat. Is it easily reachable, or tucked away in a corner, requiring 360 degrees of rotation in my wrists? Once I’ve found it, does it have enough space to accommodate my charging devices, or do I need to balance them in place like an elephant on a stool?

When facing the in-flight entertainment screen for the first time, I instinctively evaluate if its user interface is intuitive. Does it display key pieces of info about my flight, telling me when we're going to land and how long the trip is going to be so I can plan for adjusting to the time difference? After lift off, am I able to browse the entertainment catalog easily, find and follow the interactive flight path, and get information about my connecting gate?

During meal times, I like to pause my movie and remove my headphones so I can hear and engage with the flight attendant. But I frequently find myself fumbling through the strait jacket formed by the headphone cable and the remote control's tether, turning what should be a break into a frustrating interlude.

If I need to use the restroom before my plates have been cleared, reconfiguring my seat and adjusting my table's position only to contort myself into a graceful exit can sometimes be harder than that day's New York Times Connections puzzle.

But the experience of flight actually begins before you arrive at your gate. From booking flights to navigating airports, I'll examine the design and layout of the digital and physical spaces we encounter before we get onboard. Are airline websites and apps intuitive and useful? Are airports well-organised, with clear wayfinding, recognizable symbols, and features that reduce the anxiety of flight?

I hope that this end-to-end perspective of the flying experience resonates with you. Ultimately the goal is to catalog these experiences to spur the industry to think more comprehensively about the user experience (UX) of flying so that it can remain an experience full of wonder.

With that, I invite you to collect your opinions, analyses and ideas, and share them with me at [email protected]. So get comfy, unbuckle your seatbelt, recline that seatback, and unstow your tray table. Together, we're going to unpack the human factors of the passenger's experience!