United Airlines | Designing the Future of Airport Lobbies

Making lobby efficient for infrequent travelers

ROLE

Product Designer

Timeline

Jan 2025 - Aug 2025

Team

2 product designers (including me)

Lobby Manager @ United

UX Researcher @ United

Platform

United App - mobile UI, IOS Live Activities, Kiosk

• Context

What I Did

My Role

Led design for live activity widget for wait times, redesign of mobile app home screen with "Get ready for your trip", and design concepts to surface actions to prepare travelers during pre-arrival phases
Conducted research including contextual inquiry and walk-up interviews (n=15) at SeaTac airport and iterative moderated concept and usability testing sessions with 15+ infrequent travelers

Sponsor Goal

Rethink the airport lobby experience (everything pre-TSA)

United wants to reduce confusion, speed up processes, and help passengers move through the lobby with less reliance on staff. They are especially focused on helping infrequent travelers, who make up 70% of their customers and often feel overwhelmed when they arrive at the airport.

SeaTac United Lobby, 29th April

IMPACT SUMMARY

Designed pre-arrival guidance projected to drive major adoption and time savings - recognized by 4+ stakeholders as production-ready and roadmap-defining

“Great job of providing a phenomenal slate of ideas. I’m very happy with this. We’ll use this as…reference as we continue to build out our roadmap.”

Sr Manager Airport Experience, United Airlines

“A lot of the solutions and ideas you’ve thought through may address not only today’s problems, but tomorrow’s problems.”

Manager, Lobby Experience, United Airlines

• Problem

Infrequent travelers often face uncertainty both before arriving at the airport and while using self service kiosks in the lobby.

Before arrival: Lack of clear, personalized guidance creates uncertainty and anxiety around timing

At the kiosk: Small moments of confusion make travelers doubt themselves, often defaulting to agents

Infrequent travelers often face uncertainty both before arriving at the airport and while using self service kiosks in the lobby.

Before arrival: Lack of clear, personalized guidance creates uncertainty and anxiety around timing

At the kiosk: Small moments of confusion make travelers doubt themselves, often defaulting to agents

USER NEEDS

SPEED

REASSURANCE

EASE OF USE

“This is my first time in Seattle, so I didn't know the airport, I was a little confused. I felt like everybody was as confused as me...I just didn't feel like things were clear, for a person who's just walking in.”

— P1 Infrequent Traveler

Goal

How Might We

• FINAL DESIGNS

A personalized guidance system that supports infrequent travelers from home to gate, giving them clear steps, smart recommendations, and real‑time updates so they can move through the airport lobby quickly, avoid unnecessary delays, and feel confident every step of the way

Overview

Turning Uncertainty Into Control Across the Travel Journey

End-to-end guidance system working across the entire user journey to surface the right step at the right time.

Whether its bag scan or wait times before leaving home, OR journey preview or navigation once you're arriving at the airport - this is a framework that identifies moments of stress and gaps in knowledge for an infrequent traveler and replaces it with more control, visibility and reassurance - in a way thats personalised to their specific travel situation.

• REsearch

Research Methodology

What we did

Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry (April 29th)

5-6 Airline agents

United Lobby at SeaTac

Observe the current flow, probe the experts

Walk-Up Interviews

Walk-Up Informal Interviews (May 1st)

15 United travelers (5 Frequent/ 10 Infrequent)

4 Boarding Gates at SeaTac (A4, A5, A8, A10)

Diverse user accounts captured in context

15 travelers (5 Frequent/ 10 Infrequent)

4 Boarding Gates at SeaTac

Diverse user accounts in context

Research INsights

What we found

🔗

Click here to read the full generative research report

• Process

Ideation

Casting the net wide to find the right direction

🪜

Ideated across journey stages

💭

Focused on divergence

Design-test iterative sprints

Concepts were shaped through iterative design-test cycles, increasing in fidelity as ideas balancing user value, business impact, and technical feasibility were refined

Design Decision-making

Notable explorations and pivots: Every solution came from diverging wide, testing with travelers, and making deliberate pivots based on what resonated most

• How should actions surface and unfold progressively?

Initial Design Concept

Real-time checklist (Widget to expandable drawer)

✅ The info felt useful to users
✅ The actions themselves, like security wait and bag scan were valuable

❌ It felt too cluttered
❌ Hid the app’s main bottom nav

“If it had valuable info, and not just reminder to check-in or use the kiosk - I would want to see it.”

REVISED Design Concept

Mini-checklist as an expandable drawer

✅ Only the most important current action was visible

❌ was easily ignored by users - lost among other banners in the app
❌ Did not surface information relevant for a checked-in user

“If I saw 2/5 steps, I would be like - oh my gosh I have 3 more steps. It kind of seems like I have all of this to do.”

Final Design Concept

From checklist to control centre → the home screen hero

✅ Surfaces the most relevant current action was visible
✅ Appears in context to boarding information
✅ “Checked-in” status feels reassuring

“Fly to Tulum, that was kind of random for me to see. I wouldn't really expect to see that.”

“If it's an airport that I'm unfamiliar with, which is every airport, I feel like that would be super helpful.”

With the goal to not bombard the users with notifications, but at the same time not hide important actions within app menus - I used this framework of notifications, app home and live activity - as touch points to surface these key actions depending on the context and urgency they demand.

• How Can Self-service in the lobby be seamless?

Initial Design Concept

To reduce hesitation at kiosk and reliance on agents, the new kiosk greets travelers as they approach by sensing proximity and uses a calming glow to guide them through check-in

✅ Proximity sensing could mean smoother onboarding to self-service kiosks
✅ Idle-time would be an easy trigger hence glow animation was well-received by stakeholders

❌ Users felt more pressured than reassured
❌ They value autonomy and are resistant to systems without their clear approval

“I'm thinking about security...how does it know my proximity?…a little bit creepy. I think it's great when I scan it and it has my name pop up, because personally I don't want the whole world to see my name”

REVISED Design Concept

Explored micro-interactions that might reassure and guide

❌ Glow isn't the solution and doesn't contribute to reassurance, it's the actual kiosk screens that need to change and then the glow is an addition

❌ For someone unfamiliar with kiosks, they would still ask an agent if they saw the glow,

❌ Glow isn't the solution and doesn't contribute to reassurance, it's the actual kiosk screens that need to change and then the glow is an addition

❌ For someone unfamiliar with kiosks, they would still ask an agent if they saw the glow,

“I think the glow... gives, like, a sense of urgency and rush. I'm like, oh... I’m gonna time out or something.”

Final Design Concept

Introduced NFC tap and seamless kiosk flows for the near-term, while envisioning a tagless future with biometric bag ID

✅ NFC is familiar to travelers, preferred fastest method to pull up reservation

“I prefer the phone tap. It's just, easier, more efficient, faster, I don't know - I just pull up my phone & scan it.”

5/6

Users prefer NFC tap over QR or confirmation code

5/6

Users prefer NFC tap over QR or confirmation code

• IMPACT

Designed pre-arrival guidance projected to increase app adoption by 85%, save travelers an estimated 10-15 mins in the lobby, and boost service adoption rates by 70%

Increased app adoption

85%

of participants would download the United app for pre-arrival guidance features, even if they were infrequent travelers

Saved time in the lobby

10-15 mins

Travelers estimated saving time when they knew exactly when, where to go and what to do, using "Journey Preview" and "Wait Time" feature

Service adoption

70%

of participants would try to understand services like curbside or bag drop shortcut if Journey Preview surfaced them with clear time savings

Choosing United again

Traveler Loyalty

Majority of participants said they would choose United again over competitors citing value of these features, when fares were comparable

STAKEHOLDER FEEDBACK

Stakeholders saw our work as production-ready, strategically aligned, and impactful enough to influence United’s roadmap for the year ahead

“The presentation itself - really well done… the designs look already ready to take to production. Great job in the quality of both presentation and the designs themselves.”

Jason Flint

Director, Digital Delivery United Airlines

“Great job. A lot of the solutions and ideas you’ve thought through may address not only today’s problems, but tomorrow’s problems.”

Jay Ahuja

Manager, Lobby Experience

“You guys did a great job of providing a phenomenal slate of ideas. I’m very happy with this. I think we’ll use this for at least the next year in reference as we continue to build out our roadmap.”

Casey Spaargaren

Sr Manager. Airport Experience

"One of the most extensive design scope we’ve seen in the projects… big thumbs up and kudos. Your professionalism, the way you present, the way you conducted research- that was all really up there.”

Axel Roesler

Professor, Interaction Design @ UW

“The presentation itself - really well done… the designs look already ready to take to production. Great job in the quality of both presentation and the designs themselves.”

Jason Flint

Director, Digital Delivery United Airlines

• Learnings

Designing for behavior under pressure
Learned how emotional reassurance, not speed - is the biggest value-add in stressful travel spaces, and how to support behaviour change through calm, well-timed guidance.

Thinking in systems and timelines
Practiced service design across digital, physical, and operational layers balancing short-term feasibility with long-term vision through roadmap-driven decisions.
Testing as a design habit, not a milestone
Weekly design-test cycles helped us uncover blind spots early, validate direction, and stay accountable to real user needs - not just internal ideas.

Designing for behavior under pressure
Learned how emotional reassurance, not speed - is the biggest value-add in stressful travel spaces, and how to support behaviour change through calm, well-timed guidance.

Thinking in systems and timelines
Practiced service design across digital, physical, and operational layers balancing short-term feasibility with long-term vision through roadmap-driven decisions.
Testing as a design habit, not a milestone
Weekly design-test cycles helped us uncover blind spots early, validate direction, and stay accountable to real user needs - not just internal ideas.

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Call

+1 2065369593

Write

kashvigoel38@gmail.com