C-Suite CX Innovation
Each year United Airlines holds a leadership event to showcase key business objectives that are two fold: demonstrate developed experiences while conveying to leadership what needs to come next. It is a convergence of customer experience with (IT) technology innovation.
The Challenge.
Projects at United Airlines receives millions of dollars each year. There is a consistent challenge to reflect the vision in order to maintain active quarterly and yearly infrastructure budgets.
Each year United Airlines holds a leadership event that discusses various business objectives and forward thought leadership communication convergence of customer experience and technology innovation. My team was tasked to come up with several creative proposals. One of the winning ideas was to design two parallax sites that attendees could share with co-workers as a catalyst for excitement.
The Approach.
Our most pressing challenge that required my oversight was that we had three weeks within a very limited budget. This project could not disrupt current project timelines or deliverables as the team was already stretched. I hired a freelance illustrator to work on layered frames while the design team leveraged Adobe Muse to create the parallax animations.
Stakeholder pitch ideation session (topical and format)
Finalize proposals
Sketch subject matter goals into each frames
On-board illustrator
Review B&W sketches, pivot
Begin laying in animation to parallax sites, content/captions
Finalize illustrations
Finalize content strategy
Finalize animation keyframes in parallax sites
Quality Assurance Delivery
Publish
“We had a truly horrific event last year... with the doctor that was dragged off the plane. And people say, 'Aren't you glad that's over? Can't you wait for that thing to go away?'
That is the furthest thing from my mind and our mind. We want it front and center. We constantly want to be reminded of how things can go wrong so quickly.”
— CEO Oscar Munoz, Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz told executives gathered in Chicago that the airline "got it wrong" last week when one dog suffocated in an overhead compartment.
“How might we envision the agent day-in-the-life?”
Our IT vertical (Above the Wing) looked to the question:
Booth Visualization
Storyboards “Blue Sky”
Storyboards “IRROPS” (Dark Skies)
The Agent Journey
We looked at the Customer Journey an contrasted supporting agent experiences we sought to create in the near future.
Why it was necessary.
Within our IT releases, we have been iteratively building multiple releases and apps with very limited awareness to understanding impact to CSRs. We want to ask the “how, what, where, why and when’s” of our operations directly from the CSRs themselves that identify the right problems with the right solutions.
It is also challenging in our design development to support variations to our products among various persona needs and ethnographic impacts.
To innovate for the future, we must constantly pivot toward a north star vision that can be socialized in journey maps and service blueprints. These documents identify, strategize and evolve holistic projects what United Airlines operations can achieve.
The moment it came together:
“From storyboards to visualization. No other teams were showing an illustrated video of our future.”
United IT Managing Director for Global Airport Ops
The Future Agent Visualization
Blue Sky Experience
Our Blue Sky Experience reflects when operations is running normal without weather impacts.
IRROPS Experience
Our IRROPS Experience reflects when operations is not running normal (aka irregular operations) with significant weather impacts.
What we achieved.
Significant traffic was created around our IT booth with leadership expressing significant questions around what to do next and early discussions on a funding plan.
Three new projects each with over a million in investment were approved within the next round of budget approvals.