Space Available Travel App
What is Space-A?
Space Available Travel (“Space-A”) is a military benefit entitled to eligible veterans (retirees and family) and active/reserve military. This permits individuals to fly for free on aircraft is not fully booked, similar to how civilian airline corporations allow their employees and families to fly for free.
Background
Currently, the process to fly Space-A requires the following:
Find nearest participating Passenger Terminals (aka “pax terminal” — located typically at Air Force bases but some are at airports, e.g. Baltimore and SeaTac).
Find flights: call the pax terminal and listen to the automated recording for the 72 hour schedule OR look at the Facebook page for each pax terminal
E-mail registration information to each terminal or sign up in person
If buying an onboard meal, pay using cash (some are migrating to credit)
The Problem
How do we make Space-A more predictable while reducing labor intensive processes and maintain security?
The Solution
The Space-A Mobile App
The Value
Methods
Competitive/Comparative Feature Analysis
Space-A is a military benefit, therefore not necessarily considered to have competition in a typical sense. On the other hand, if a potential user were to turn elsewhere for air travel, it would be to commercial airlines. If so, the current Space-A process has very little in common with its competitors in terms of features. In its current state with its manual email sending, form filling or hard-copy faxing, as well as directing users off to various Facebook pages for flight schedules, it would unfair to expect Space-A to measure up with its competition. Example after example of features successfully executed by commercial airlines, but missing entirely from Space-A’s site. Indirect competitors and comparators showed similar results.
User Research
Screener Survey
Before we conducted any user research, we wanted to be sure we would be testing from the right pool of users. We structured a screener survey with questions to weed out those users who would not provide as meaningful data as others.
Our survey returned responses from six individuals, five of whom have had military experience and two of whom have previously used Space-A.
User Interviews
We conducted four user interviews. Three of which have used Space-A and all had knowledge of Space-A. Two of which were recruited from the local USO (United Service Organization). Certain insights were clear right away about what potential problems users faced. But in general users appreciated the service, low-level usability notwithstanding. But testing the usability would be out next step.
“Space-A is a great service…when it works.”
The Current Site
As you can see below, users are expected to decipher this extremely wordy and complicated looking website.
All of the pertinent information is located beneath the fold when opening the page.
Users would often get lost in this sea of options.
The Form-140 Travel Request
If users are actually able to figure out what’s going on on this page, they have to fill out the form below and either bring it to the terminal or email it to the representatives. But users are often unsure how to fill it out nor to whom it should be send to nor how to send it!
Once a flight request is confirmed, the users are expected to find flight information. Remarkably, there is nothing indicating that in order to do so, the user must find, hidden in this maze of text, a small section to on the right-hand side, “Social Media Sites.”
Flight Terminal Facebook Pages
Each link in the “Social Media Sites” section leads to a unique Facebook page, per terminal. There are 70 different pages and they are not linked in any way other than in this section on the side of the website.
Users consistently failed to figure this out.
“I had to drive 20 miles to see the schedule.”
Usability Testing of Current Process
In creating our usability test script, we designed three scenarios designed for usage with three types of potential users.
Retired Military Member
You just retired from the military and you and your partner now have a lot of time to be free. You’ve always been wanting to go to Europe, Hawaii, or Asia and can go at anytime. Your car is also gassed up and ready to go to a road trip to get to an airport.
Non Military Person
After 3 difficult months, you just finished basic training in the Army and you now have 14 days of vacation before you start your new job as a military culinary-specialist at Fort Lewis, Washington. As an adventurous person, you just want to go somewhere. You heard from a friend that you can fly for free using something called ‘Space Available (Space-A) travel’.
Current Active Duty military
You’re on leave (aka vacation) for 14 days and have always been eyeing a flight to Europe to visit your buddies in the Germany. You’ve heard from a coworker that your location has regular flights to Europe.
User Tasks
Two tasks, which would eventually be updated to fit our mobile redesign.
This is an example of a departure schedule available on one of 70 PAX Terminal Facebook pages.
TASK 1
Find any flight schedule.
User must open it and be able to explain where it’s flying from, to, and when.
TASK 2
Talk through how you would go about the Space-A sign up process
User must explain what they would email and to who.
“Why can’t there be a web form for this?”
Usability testing of the current process revealed very consistent results from all three participants. None were familiar with Space-A, or the military jargon its website expected the user to have. Therefore, we believe our findings represent very clear areas worth addressing.
Insights:
Users find it difficult to scroll through all the verbiage on the site.
Users find the sign up process very difficult
Users find it difficult to find flight schedules
User do not trust the Space-A site
Affinity Mapping
Click to view in Hi-Res
We entered keys items from our user interviews and our usability tests of the current site into an affinity map, zeroing in on the problem space and helping us understand the user’s motivations.
This resulted in the creation of a persona, James, the consummate user of Space-A as detailed below.
Persona
Journey Map
Click to view in Hi-Res
“It’s just a risk.”
Usability Testing of Mobile App Prototype
Usability testing of our mobile app prototype in its first iteration also revealed very consistent results from all four participants, all recruited onsite at McGuire Air Force Base, just South of Trenton New Jersey.
And all participants were very familiar with Space-A. They expressed much appreciation for the value of our design.
Insights:
Users are concerned with the service’s lack of a guaranteed seat, and gave feedback aimed at alleviating that concern.
Live updates for user’s flight requests would eliminate many of the questions typically called in (eg. regarding likelihood of getting a seat), saving time both for users and service reps.
Users enjoy a scaled down, less cluttered design- both functionally and visually.
Information Architecture
Click to view in Hi-Res
User Flow 1
Task: Submit Travel Request as an active duty member on leave (From homepage)
User Flow 2
Click to view in Hi-Res
Task: Request Seats Starting from Home (and view standby list)
Site Map (App Map)
Click to view in Hi-Res
Hi Fidelity Prototype Demo
Task 1 - Find a Flight to Germany
Task 2 - Send a Travel Request
Task 3 - Check Standby List and Reserve a Spot
Annotated Wire-frames
The Travel Request (Form 140)
Incorporating Flight Information
Currently there are three possible methods for incorporating flight information.
Automatic flight info scraping off Facebook (error prone)
Manual Data Entry by Pax Terminal Rep
Push flight info from GATES
Integration
Next Steps
Present confidence indicator
Mobile payments — no cash for meals/fees
Proactively Travel Request submit for Active Duty members on leave
Virtual Roll Call (VRC) online based check in
Automation and streamlining should continue to enhance the overall Space-A processes.
In Conclusion
Our team would like to thank our troops for their service. We hope that our design for a Space-A app will help them reap the full rewards they so deserve.
