On designing a new boarding pass

[ozkid]

Just read this interesting article on Wired, by a designer who thinks existing boarding passes can/should be updated to be more user-friendly. I think he's onto something.

Now, if only QF did fly SFO-SYD again...


Dear Airlines: This Is What Your Boarding Passes Should Look Like | Wired Design | Wired.com

 

[Hvr]

Interesting thoughts but he's obviously not a frequent flyer. He says that zone 1 of the BP is for staff.

Yet the FF status is (should be) important for the staff and its at the bottom of the document. I also suggest the scanning bits need to be larger and possibly nearer the centre of the BP to prevent damage that occurs at the edge.

So a nice article to start raising discussion but not the end of the process.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

Having the boarding time & gate number in red stands out however that would only happen if you checked in with that airline at certain ports ie not if you did OLCI or were checked in downline by a partner airline.

 

[anat0l]

I think font size is more important than its colour. It's alright for many of us with normal vision, but for the visually impaired colour interferes with contrast. So it's more important to have the gate and boarding time in large print rather than colour it red.

The service information field is quite poor. Whilst a passenger will rarely find this information useful to them, it needs to be clear enough for those who need that information to read it quickly. As a corollary, it should not be printed on a shaded field.

And what's the point of having the origin and destination in IATA in big print on the main part of the BP and then have the same information spelt out in small print on the counterfoil? Seems counterintuitive (I know this doesn't bother many of us since we know the IATA codes off by heart...)

Let's face it: the idea in the article is a reorganisation, not a redesign (well, at least for QF BP anyway; there are some horrid BPs out there on even major airlines). The idea is sound in principle but the exemplary specimen is so flawed it almost invalidates the argument.

There was someone else who flew one of the USA airlines domestic and had a go at their BPs. Fair enough, but one of his ideas of a good BP involved overloading with graphics (especially bleed graphics), which was again a dumb idea.

 

[harvyk]

Considering that airlines are trying to push for the shopping docket style boarding passes / no boarding pass at all through mobile checkin, I will not be holding my breath for any changes any time soon.

Whilst having "window / middle seat / aisle" graphic might be a nice idea, that only really works for 3-3 configs in Y like B737's and A320's. Any other sort of config and esp with wide-bodies with it's center row of seats and the graphic goes out the window (pardon the pun).

The other thing, at least with the QF version, it has the departure airport highlighted, but for me I look for the arrival airport on the boarding pass. So in the instance of SFO-SYD I'd be looking for SYD to be as predominately displayed as SFO.