THE BACKGROUND

Due to COVID-19, many airlines needed to rethink their cabin business strategies and started to look at new, better ways to maintain their passenger-base, particularly when it comes to health and sanitization. As a result, and at a historic rate, airlines are moving away from their embedded seatback monitors and are depending on better mobile applications for inflight entertainment.

The Products & Strategy Department (including Passenger Experience) spent the better part of 2021 conducting market research and interviewing clients, coming to the conclusion that SPI had not dedicated enough of its 2022 budget to overhauling the current mobile product to meet the market’s expectations.

MY TASK

I was given the month of September 2021 to assess the second generation mobile product’s strengths and weaknesses, weigh it against our research and product strategy, and quickly turnaround a prototype POC that I would present to SPI Corporate in the hope that they would green-light adjusting the 2022 budget, software resources, and product roadmap to reflect my department’s new product prioritization.

In running a series of 4 consecutive design sprints with my design team of 5 UX/UI designers, partnering with a variety of internal SPI departments and airline clients, the Passenger Experience team was able to successfully meet the challenging delivery date. I presented the POC to SPI Corporate, both in-person and virtually, and am proud to say that not only was our POC praised, it succeeded in garnering the last-minute budget approval needed to pivot for 2022’s fiscal year.