Meet PIA,  Pittsburgh's intelligent airport assistant.

PIA is a conversational AI agent who greets you at the airport in your language.

K E Y M O M E N T S

How PIA improve your journey

Departure - mobile app

Arrival - kiosk app

R E S E A R C H

Why the Airport?

We were tasked to choose a business with more than two devices including mobile and kiosk. After visiting a number of businesses, we arrived at the airport.

Auditing current experience

We thought the resources provided by the Pittsburgh Airport have a lot of potentials but are pretty bare in their functionality right now.

Difficulties in Navigating Information

The PIT mobile application was just a directory of information.

Limited Functionality

Kiosks in the airport were performing only as a bridge to a few airline software.

Mapping pain points

While ideating pain points, we could generate plenty of frustrating scenarios that we all might have experienced or at least heard of. We mapped out these pain points to help us focus on the problems worth solving and technically plausible (Problem Space).

Speculating how VUI assistant would improve the situations

Based on the insights form the pain point mapping, we could come up with the features that PIA would help with and the modality with which users would interact with PIA to use the features throughout their journey.

I D E A T I O N

Designing interactions with PIA

Building Scenarios

To find out the situations in which PIA would be helpful to passengers, we drew storyboards for three scenarioes. Throughout the storyboarding process, we listed up key features and decided to describe two personas' journeys for our demo video. Then specified screen details to the storyboard.

Departure

Frequent User/ Local resident/ Driver who takes a flight, with a delayed flight schedule.

Arriaval

First-time User/ Foreigner/ Public transit user who lands, at late night, without someone to pick her up. 

P R O T O T Y P I N G

Designing interfaces for PIA

Defining Identity

We wanted our assistant to look or sound like she/he belongs to the airport. As airport experience includes unexpected situation, strict rules, and various groups of peopel, we wanted PIA reliable, neutral, and informed. To create this personality, we set three key words that explains PIA.

Creatinig look and feel

To develop coherent visual languages, we got inspirations from shapes of mobility, intelligence, and airport spaces. Dots and connecting lines, 3-D shapes, looping motions were main three explorations of our sketches.

Visual Identity of PIA

Final form of PIA consists of four dots and lines. These elements were devised considering fluid transitions between states.

Typography, color palette and icon styels

Rubik to keep it conversational and lively. Cabin to tap into classic wayfinding and informational aesthetics. Crisp and confident. Dominant on blue to stay close to aviation and sky shades. The icon style borrows the translucency and opacity play from the VUI identity.

Adding Motions

We created motions for each states in conversation. Based on wireframes, we defined 8 states and then made transitioning motions between states.

Defining states

We defined states needed and mapped out them on the active-passive and receptive-assertive matrix. This helped us figure out which movement would fit for each state.

Transitioning frome one to another

We created transitioning animations from states to states. Check out the full transition video below!

Integrating PIA to UI

Visual elements came together on screen. We added UI feedback including dictation and skeleton UI for clear interaction.

Mobile UI

Kiosk UI

R E F L E C T I O N S

PIA Beyond Pittsburgh

We believe PIA would help the airport to build an entire traveling ecosystem because PIA connect customers with airport infrastructure and support system throughout the experience.

Also, it will not only improve passengers' experience but also better serve the airport’s economy. Because Pia could connect passengers to the airport’s infrastructure like retail, parking, or even local businesses like transportation or accommodation facilities.

Takeaways

Designing Conversations

As a part of designing conversation, we learned about the four modes of conversation. In conversations, there are many implicated deeper meanings behind the letters. To give answers that users want, considering how to guide users to ask was also one thing to consider. Also, understanding how deep current AI technology can catch the context would also be important in building conversations.

Diversity and Accessibility

Featuring an international student in our second scenario was considering the airport context. Jin could have been anyone who needs a wheelchair, is visually impacted, or is a kid. Having a broad spectrum of users let us think and discuss solutions from many different perspectives.

How to define/ How to deliver

Pain point mapping, defining problem space, evaluating solutions. All processes we went through helped us navigate our project in one direction. Prototyping and presenting our design are also a big part of this project. It was a great opportunity to develop new software skills and soft skills.

& My team!