Today, I’m waiting for a flight in Boston Logan airport. And for a change, I’m delighted. What is clear is that this airport has put a bit of effort into some thoughtful design. Armed with my trusty iPhone and an hour until take-off, I thought I’d share a few of the design elements of terminal E that have been pleasantly surprising.

1. Human Centered Seating
Generally speaking, seating in airports is terrible. We’ve all been stuck on old torn leather chairs in dehumanizing rows with uncomfortable leather arm rests designed to ward off delayed travellers looking for a rest. Well Logan has clearly thought about the design of its seating.

While those old friends with sharp arm rests are indeed present (and serve a necessary use), Logan clearly understands that travellers are humans, and humans interact. In addition to the uncomfortable classic, Logan has clearly examined the types positions people sit in at the airport. Ever put your feet on your travel luggage? Well they offer a slightly reclined chairs with a foot rest for the tired. Ever awkwardly sit to have a conversation with the person you’re travelling with? Well Logan has chairs in V formations that allow people travelling together to have a comfortable face-to-face conversation.

In an industry where everyone has to wait, this airport has thought about how to make waiting a little more comfortable.

2. Inviting Spaces
Travel presents a long period of maintained stress. Airports must be one of the lowest quality experiences for the money. A visit to the spa costs you a hundred bucks. Airport taxes aren’t that far off that price.

While an airport can’t necessarily fix all of the experience breakdowns of flying, Logan has created some opportunities for escapism. The airport features several spaces that allow passengers isolate themselves from other travellers to relax. Including these spaces (and offering rocking chairs) gave me the right kind of escape to work on this post.

3. Understanding the needs of the Modern Traveler
As a business traveler, I often look at the airport as my office. A few months ago, I flew out of the Buffalo airport on my way to Boston for some meetings.  As any business traveler flying in the afternoon would do, I entered the terminal and looked for the nearest plug to make sure I had enough juice for the flight. Upon further investigation, every potential outlet was covered in impenetrable metal. The only available outlets? A “Pay for Power” station offering me a charge for a charge.

Logan clearly understands that waiting is more pleasant with entertainment, and modern entertainment requires a plug. Everywhere I looked, there was a free outlet – no co-opted marketing angle, no sitting on the floor next to an outlet because there were no chairs around. Just an understanding of what people need.

4. Wi-Fi for All
In addition to the four letter words most regular travellers drop regularly while being dehumanized, we have a six letter word as well – Boingo. In a world that increasingly looks at the internet as a right not a privilege, the idea of paying $10.00 for 24 hours of Wi-Fi is insulting. Do your passengers a favour – give them a little internet access in exchange for their airport tax dollars.

Logan airport progressively offered me free Wi-Fi upon arrival (all be it, sponsored by Google).  The result? I could catch up on a bit of work and find enough time to jump on  WordPress and offer the airport my compliments. When you have a good experience, you return the favour. If anyone is reading this – connect through Logan.

Airports with empathy
Sure, not all design changes lives. But we should never forget that good experiences certainly have the ability to impact them. Designing a decent airport experience is not rocket science, and a good experience at an airport could go a long way towards helping an industry notorious for experience breakdowns.

Logan airport was certainly not perfect, but what’s obvious is that it was designed with empathy. Somehow, they’ve managed to understand traveler needs and behaviours, and support them with the best design and features they can. Logan airport tries in an industry with a terrible reputation for under-delivering on customer experience, and I can’t help but leave with a positive perspective on my visit.

Have you had a great airport experience recently? Leave a comment and let us know what made it so great for you.

Handy links: Brands in Public, Zeo Sleep Coach

Brands in Public is a collection of interesting, accessible, public-facing dashboards for your favorite brands – from Zappos to Virgin America to In-n-Out Burger. Each dashboard organizes a hot list of what’s being said about the brand around the web, via Twitter and blogs and YouTube and Google Trends and more. As well as polls and debates and commenting for people who want to do more than just watch. – Bands in Public

Developed with leading sleep scientists, Zeo is a new kind of educational tool and motivational program that helps you understand how you are sleeping, reveals habits and behaviors that may be helping or hindering your sleep, and teaches new ways that may help you get a better night’s rest. -Zeo

Note: These podcast were recorded last week, so you might hear some less-than-timely mentions. Now that the Noodleplayer is up and running, this won’t happen again. Thanks.

The findings show that executives have very different perceptions of the struggles related to finding and aligning their people. In short, there is still a lack of common understanding despite its importance. Innovation is not in the core curriculum of MBA schools. Another interesting data point is 40% of top managers say that they do not have enough of the right kind of employees. Among respondents who do say enough people are available, however, nearly 50% say the right employees are in place, motivated, and protected by senior leadership, and only 22% say the organization’s culture inhibits them from making progress. The question that immediately comes to my mind when they say they do not have enough of the right kind of employees, I wonder if they have a definition of what are the “right” kinds of employees. That would be an interesting question to add to the survey.

I don’t think you will get answers such as “we need more senior executives with design thinking” or “we need more corporate misfits” etc. People who are trained in various disciplines of design are particularly good at using their instincts more than other individuals. Any innovation strategist must develop a keen interest in what works in marketplaces and what are the desirability factors as well as usability factors. Designers have an advantage and a key role to play in this innovation movement and that’s why I was saying MFA is the new MBA. The innovation field, per se, needs to use many different forms of design, crossover, jammed and integrated, to get beyond some threshold level of activity–enough to get commercially produced and, to be strategic. The great news for designers, about the rise of a corporate interest in innovation, is that it recognizes, more than ever before, the strategic contribution of “design thinking” to products, services, information, and corporate level business strategy. I think this as a long-term trend that will likely persist for at least another decade. I am not saying any designer should be given the decision making power for important business projects. I think we are talking about new capability. I don’t think we can simply put designers together with spreadsheet crawlers and expect innovation to happen.

Design thinking is not only about design. Design thinking is inherently an imagination management and prototyping process. Once you have the idea, you start to play with it. People ask me what is a “concept”, it is an idea that is ready for prototyping. The prototype is a visualization, working model, or even a small book or short film that describes a product, system, or service. Design thinking is about applying their mental models, languages and tools to complex business decision-making. I’d like to see practitioners, design schools, business schools and engineering schools coming together to create broad new cross-functional capabilities and professionalism that will actually meet the underlying need for objects, places, human-centered concepts, and distinctive experiences supported by sustainable business models that human beings crave–and enterprises must increasingly learn to deliver to thrive and prosper.

Original posted in Innovation Playground July 2007

Helpful curb cut?

Occasionally, unintended benefits are really the result of failures of usability or accessibility.  I recently came across an article where a laptop was recovered because the thief didn’t realize that it had a built-in Internet data backup service.  I can imagine this being tauted as a ‘feature’ of the product in subsequent releases.  While the outcome in this case was positive, it seems clear that the end result was due to a failure of design.  Specifically, because a new user of the product was unaware of what was happening to his personal information, the application clearly failed to follow the ‘visibility of system status’ usability heuristic.

While some would say that data backup should be a ‘behind the scenes’ action that users don’t need to see, in an age of increasing concerns about identity theft and privacy, it’s imperative that users understand where their information goes and are able to control who can access it. 

Kelly McGillis as 'Charlie'

As Charlie scolded the Top Gun class: “The encounter was a victory, but we show it as an example of what not to do.”