“Your journey should be seamless—from home to destination. Instead, it’s waiting lines, food when not hungry, delays, and too many stakeholders pulling in different directions.”
This is not a myth; it is the reality!
Apple, Uber, and Amazon excel because they built end-to-end experiences from scratch. Many companies copy the idea of “experience innovation” but fail, trapped in their own silos and legacy systems.
Aviation? Is a journey industry by nature—yet the most fragmented one (page 1). The result: broken experiences, long waits, stress, unclear (bag) regulations and unmet expectations.
Experience innovation isn’t about polishing every touchpoint. It’s about meeting deeper passenger needs through conscious choices (page 2):
– Ryanair succeeds with ¨time well saved¨ in any part of their services.
– Premium Airlines offer ¨time well spent¨ with lounges & premium class seats.
The challenge for the next decade is clear: how might we co-create a more holistic journey, balancing time well saved, and time well spent across silos?
🚀 This series explored why most innovation falls short and what it takes to uncover deep needs. With the Experience Innovation Pyramid and Playbook (page 3 &4), I introduce a way forward—let’s explore together how it can drive lasting impact on seamless experiences:
1️⃣ Journey Thinking: expose fragmentation across silos while identifying deeper meaning.
2️⃣ Experience Innovation: turning fragmented journeys into seamless, co-created experiences—using technology not as the driver, but as the enabler.
3️⃣ System Innovation: break down silos to enable these experiences.
You can’t innovate in isolation. Tech-push, Airline Labs and Design refresh alone won’t solve this. What works: User experience research and Living Lab experiments where passengers, crew, and stakeholders co-create while redesigning underlying systems.
💡 The call to action:
· Develop co-creation skills.
· Optimize each stage—but not in isolation.
· Create clear handovers or smooth transitions between stakeholders & silos.
· Choose consciously: when to save time, when to enrich it.
· Ensure connected in-flight experiences match ground expectations.
Even successful innovations I was involved in like Schiphol’s BAGDROP or the introduction of the Mobile Channel with mobile boarding cards removed friction but didn’t create seamlessness. True meaningful innovation means connecting the dots across the ecosystem.
💡 Seamless journeys, not only in Aviation are not impossible. They just require co-creation across silos, conscious choices between ¨time well saved¨ and ¨time well spent¨, and the ability to connect the dots.
👉 So where will you start this challenge—I can help to explore your customers pain points, frictions, opportunities and silo´s ?