Wheelchair workshop

I have always enjoyed working in the accessibility space. While in my design boot camp, I helped define the curriculum around designing for folks with disabilities. See this free accessibility guide I created, synthesizing what my team learned. 

My Role: The wheelchair accessibility team brought me in to assist in running a workshop, scoping out the first phase of the customer-facing ideas road map.


My First Steps: Before getting involved, the team worked on a few backend updates to United’s systems to lay the groundwork for this customer-facing phase and research with another design team. I met with the team and assessed their needs and goals.

Prior to this workshop

  • Research

    A previous product team put together a journey map based on data analytics and time spent with customers at the airport.

  • Data analytics

    I partnered with the business and data analytics team to refresh data and breathe new life into the current state journey map.

  • Third party vendors

    Previous research didn’t include a lot of information about the third-party wheelchair escort vendors did along the journey. I wanted to understand the vendor’s workflow better so we could document how their tools were used.

Objectives & goals

During the planning meeting with my business stakeholders, we defined the problem as such:

 
 

“How might we develop alerts in the most effective way to provide alerts to local United customers and local leaders who are in a position to investigate, mitigate and help the customer”

We wanted to raise alerts to customers and employees to improve the wheelchair customer’s journey.

At the workshop, I collaborated with:

  • Policy owners

  • Development teams

  • Business teams

  • Airport & inflight operations

  • Third-party vendors

I split the group of 26 workshop participants into two groups. Each group focuses on two parts of the journey: preboarding and deplaning. Customer complaints and data we collected showed a conflict right before customers boarded the plane and right after the plane lands. More specifically long wait times at the gate, no shows, [add another example]. I asked the group, “how would adding alerts enhance the pre-boarding and deplaning experience?”. Each group provided plenty of feedback and ideas. We documented them in a tools backlog and journey map (see fig. X).

Agenda: 

[time] Intros 

10-15 minutes – Share the problem / Powerpoint 10-15 mins

  • Walkthrough the journey

20 minutes – Partners share their vendor experiences

45 minutes to 1 hour – Group solutions

  • Split into two groups: Preboarding and Deplaning Expectations, feelings, general thoughts

  • How might we mitigate negative experiences?

5 minutes – Break

45 minutes – Talk through solutions & performance escalation

15 minutes – Discuss next steps & responsibilities

  • Which team (present & absent) is doing what?

Outcomes of the workshop

Ideas and tools backlog

The team shared so many great ideas during the workshop. We documented them in a tool catalog and backlog. There, we paired ideas with the tool that was best suited those ideas. This was a future-facing document rather than a journey map.

Journey map

This map defined the first phase of alerting wheelchair customers, gate agents, supervisors, and vendors. It showcases the current and future state of the journey solidified where the team was headed and communicated the high-level design and technical requirements.

The alerts to customers, agents, and vendors shown in this journey map will be in production by late 2022.