How Might We Make Checking Bags as Easy as Carrying Them?

You’ve just landed after a long flight, excited to start your trip. However as the baggages were united with their owners, you realise your suitcase is nowhere in sight. You must be wondering what happens next? For millions of passengers each year, lost or delayed baggage means frustration, uncertainty, and hours of waiting with no real answers. By 2030, global passenger traffic is forecast to exceed 12 billion, how can we design a better system that puts you in control?

For millions of traveler's worldwide, airports can be overwhelming, especially for first-time flyers. Navigation, security, boarding can feel like an unending maze. While self-service kiosks have become an industry norm, they often prioritise efficiency over user experience, leaving many passengers feeling lost in a sea of unfamiliarity.

As air travel continues to expand—especially in rapidly growing aviation markets like India—airports and airlines face a dual challenge:

• Enhancing operational efficiency to manage high passenger volumes.
• Ensuring first-time traveler's feel empowered, not confused, by technology.

A Frictionless Start to Every Journey

Checking in baggage should be simple. But for many travelers, especially those flying for the first time, it’s anything but. The process is riddled with questions:

• “Where do I go?”
• “How do I tag my bag?”
• “What if I make a mistake?”

For those unfamiliar with self-service kiosks, these uncertainties create hesitation, slowing down the process and increasing reliance on staff assistance—defeating the purpose of automation.

Breaking Down the Pain Points: A Traveler’s Perspective

Beyond Just a Kiosk: Rethinking the travel experience

Most airport kiosks are designed with a one-size-fits-all mindset, often ignoring the needs of first-time travelers or those unfamiliar with automated systems. This project wasn’t just about designing another self-service machine—it was about rethinking how Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) can ease passenger anxiety and improve trust in technology.

By blending UX, psychology, and clean visuals, we transformed a traditionally stressful process into an intuitive, reassuring, and even enjoyable experience.

Shaping the Future of Seamless Travel

In an industry where efficiency is the driving force, we often forget that passengers aren’t just moving through a system—they’re experiencing a journey.

Our reimagined self-service baggage drop kiosk:

Navigating Implementation Complexities: From Concept to Reality

Current airport systems process an average of 24,000 bags per hour during peak times, with each piece of luggage interacting with up to 7 different subsystems from drop-off to final loading. Our reimagined kiosk must seamlessly integrate with these existing systems while maintaining the current processing speeds and improving reliability—airlines reported a baggage mishandling rate of 4.35 bags per thousand passengers in 2023, representing significant room for improvement.

The successful deployment of this new system requires careful orchestration across multiple stakeholders. With over 1,200 airports globally using some form of automated baggage handling system, standardization becomes crucial. The challenge lies in creating a system that can adapt to varying infrastructure levels—from major hubs processing millions of bags annually to regional airports handling just a few thousand. Implementation must consider not just the technical integration but also the human element: airports typically require 3-6 months to fully train staff on new systems, and passenger adaptation periods can extend up to 12 months post-implementation.

Yet the potential benefits are substantial: airports that have implemented similar passenger-centric automation systems have reported up to 40% reduction in processing times and a 25% increase in passenger satisfaction scores, suggesting that while the path to implementation is complex, the destination is worth the journey.

Making Technology Work For People, Not Against Them

As air travel continues to evolve, airports must rethink how they introduce automation. Because great technology isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about making people feel at ease. By prioritizing clarity, reassurance, and ease of use, the experience feels more simple.

Most self-service kiosks expect passengers to adapt to technology. We flipped that thinking, designing experiences that adapts to passengers. As air travel continues to grow, airports must evolve to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse passenger base. What if the next generation of travel tech was designed to make every journey feel effortless?