FACT: Flight Attendant Connection Tool
Project Overview
The Inflight Experience department of Frontier Airlines is responsible for managing the Flight Attendants of the airline. They brought me onto their team looking to update their communications to be more effective and aligned with the Frontier brand.
Role: Designer of Communication and Branding
Team: I reported directly to the V.P. of the Inflight Experience department. I was the only intern in the department at the time and the only designer.
Timeline: 5 months
The Challenge
When I arrived, the relationship between Frontier Airlines and their flight attendants was incredibly strained due to layover model changes and ongoing union contract negotiations. Flight Attendants were cutting corners in their inflight service out of resentment. Frontier Airlines needed to find a way to improve the Flight Attendant’s experience in order to uphold their standards for service.
The Users: Flight Attendants
Age: 20-60+
Flight Attendants make up over 50% of the Frontier Airlines work force.
They are unionized, this significantly contributes to the tension between the company and Flight Attendants (especially when a new union contract is being negotiated).
Flight Attendants are primarily self-managing. They can go months without interacting with their supervisors and they build their own schedules, making them an extremely independent workforce.
Research
Community Observation
I reviewed job boards to see what previous Flight Attendants had to say about the company.
I attended an initial training graduation to compare the attitudes of Flight Attendants at the end of their career to Flight Attendants at the beginning of their career.
I traveled on 20 different Frontier flights in order to observe the on board behavior of Flight Attendants and view the dynamics between a full crew.
Contextual Inquiry
I completed a full day of recurrent training.
I attended initial training for several days
I toured 5 different bases
I spent significant time in 4 different crew rooms.
User Interviews
I conducted interviews on 10 different flights, interviewing the entire crew (minus pilots).
I also conducted interviews of new hires (recent graduates of initial training)
I interviewed reserve crews.
I also interviewed Inflight Leadership, all of which have been an active Flight Attendants previously.
Major Themes/Pain Points
General Attitude of the Flight Attendant Workforce: Disenfranchisement
There is little to no loyalty to the Frontier Airlines brand amongst the Flight Attendants.
A majority of Flight Attendants agreed with the sentiment of “I am embarrassed to tell other people that I work for Frontier Airlines.”
Most of the information that Flight Attendants receive is by word of mouth; this results in many false rumors about the company to be spread and embraced by Flight Attendants.
Flight Attendants likely rely on gossip for information because they struggle to find information relevant to them amongst the resources distributed by the company.
Communication Journey Map
I mapped out every standardized communication sent from the company to the Flight Attendants (any email, document, event, phone call, or text).
328 documented points of contact between the company and the Flight Attendants, including samples of the communication.
The journey map also revealed major deficiencies in the company’s communication for specific points in a Flight Attendant’s career.
60% of unique communication happens before a Flight Attendants first day of work.
FACT Before
FACT is a knowledge base that was established in 2020 to help inform Flight Attendants in the midst of the pandemic. It is still updated constantly and is the quickest, most reliable source of information when it comes to any logistic questions Flight Attendants may have. However, many of the Flight Attendants I interviewed did not consider FACT a suitable option for finding answers to their job-related questions. Much of this was attributed to that fact that its interface was not inviting, or user-friendly. Flight Attendants were disincentivized from using FACT because based on the interface, they had a low level of confidence in the product.
Design Goals
I wanted to address Flight Attendant’s struggle to find reliable information from the company by improving the visual appearance of FACT to increase the perceived credibility. My goal was to incentivize use of FACT by updating the visual interface to be more aligned with the Frontier brand and more modern in terms of design. The knowledge base is continually updated by team members who are incredibly knowledgeable on policy and procedure, my hope was that the Flight Attendants could learn to rely on this incredibly valuable resource.
Final Design
I gained inspiration from other knowledge base websites to better understand how to make a large amount of information easily accessible and digestible. I wanted the end product to increase the appeal of the website, but I also designed for users to have more engaging interactions with the content stored within.
I also wanted FACT to be a positive representation of the Frontier brand, so I had to be sure that all elements of the website were aligned with the brand guidelines. This involved designing a new logo for FACT; which is composed of the destination pin icon and the Flight Attendant wings, two icons that are highly impactful for Flight Attendants.
Conclusion
The inflight department doesn’t have a developer on their team, so I was responsible for implementing the designs. While this was initially daunting (as my HTML and CSS skills were a bit rusty), I ended up really enjoying the development stage of this project. I received a lot of satisfaction as the website came to life and I appreciated being able to ensure the end product matched my designs as closely as possible.
As I look back on this project, I feel grateful for the opportunity and I am proud of myself for seeing the project through every stage. While working completely alone was challenging at times, I am proud of myself for conducting all of the research, proposing the project, designing, and eventually developing the end product entirely on my own. While I prefer working with a team, I was able to prove to myself that I can still produce something to be proud of — even without a team to support me!