Family on the Wings has been designed and prototyped in four weeks by Marco Triverio, Helle Rohde Andersen, and Hao-Ting Chang during the Service Design class held by Brian Rink (IDEO Bay Area), Nina Christoffersen (IDEO Munich), Rory Hamilton (Live|Work), Eilidh Dickson (CIID), and Julia Frederking (CIID) at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID, www.ciid.dk).

Family On The Wings is a community service connecting a child traveling alone with a family on the same route in order to create a personal, playful and safe traveling experience. The service facilitates a network of trust by connecting families and their children with other families from their local environment.

Who is it for?

The user group is children traveling alone. By connecting these children with a ‘host’ family, they will travel with the same people, who speak their own language, throughout the entire journey. Therefore, the service also targets the parents of the children traveling alone and the families who will accompany the child on the journey. The service facilitates meetings between families via an online community, where the users can create family profiles and get in touch with each other by shared reference points.

Why is it valuable?

The service improves the traveling experience for both children and the host family by creating a playful, personal and smooth journey from check in at the airport to the arrival at the destination. The value lies in the personal and trustful relationship that the families build using the full service system from initiating the first contact with another family in the online community to sending a child traveling with this family, to sharing this traveling experience for other users to read and benefit from in the community.

The service works both on a macro and a micro level, providing the overall framework for families to find each other and meet, as well as handling the practicalities of planning the journey.

The value is created by the users, who connect and share their experiences through the community site. Moreover, tangible and intangible benefits are provided for the guest child and the host family throughout the journey in the form of access to the fast track security check, a map of all playgrounds in the airport, a camera and toys for the kids, coffee for the parents and a ride in an airport car to their gate. All touch points offered to ease the experience of traveling with children. Furthermore the host family has the change to earn bonus miles when accompanying a child.

How does it work?

Family On The Wings is a service platform facilitating a trustful network of traveling families. Users create family profiles in the online community and start building up a complete and trustworthy profile by providing pictures, information and sharing stories of their previous traveling experiences with Family On The Wings. Furthermore, users can find shared points of reference by providing information about their local networks and by connecting their profile to Facebook and LinkedIn.

Family On The Wings collaborates with the major airline companies and provides several touch points throughout the airport. The two families traveling together can either choose to check in together on the website or meet in the airport to do it. At check-in the host family is provided with a contact list. This list contains information about who is picking up the guest child on arrival and additional information of other people who are also allowed to pick up the child, if plans should change. The host family and the children also receive a Family On The Wings welcome bag at this point to ease their journey through the airport.

Before the host family and the guest child arrive, the relative picking up the child at the arrival destination checks in to the airline company in order to confirm her or his identity. The relative receives two Family On The Wings-badges to pass to the child and the host family when they meet. The badge works as a symbol of the completion of their journey together and will over time become a collectors item for the children to feel proud of their accomplishment. As soon as both families have shared their stories of their journeys back to the community, the badge will also appear on the family profile as a symbol of the experience.

Every guest child is given this wallet to carry all the important travel documents. This wallet is also used as a way to indirectly and playfully verify that the person who is picking up the child is indeed authorized to do so.

At the very beginning of the project we have spent time at Copenhagen airport observing people and their behaviors. Emotions -intense, sudden, and exposed- are a big part of passengers’ journeys.

It is during our focused observations that we have come in contact with the Unaccompanied Minors service, which makes it possible for children between 5 and 15 to travel alone. Copenhagen airport sees as many as 400 children traveling alone each day in the busiest days in summer.

Back to the studio we have discussed what we have observed at the airport and we have formulated several insights. This analysis has been ground for more focused observations.

We have also carried out research in analogous scopes. In particular we have investigated arrivals and departures in restaurants, hospitals, and clinics.

During the focused observations we have talked to many staff members and many travelers.

We have followed and talked to many unaccompanied minors. We have also had the chance to impersonate a staff member (picture of the top right) and accompany a kid from one airplane to the waiting room and from the waiting room on another airplane.

We have brainstormed extensively -hundreds of ideas were generated- on the “How might we” questions framed starting from the insights. We have also involved designers from other teams.

From the brainstorming session we have culled out and develop four concepts. After getting feedback from our client, the Copenhagen airport, we have selected the “Family on the Wings” concept and we have developed an initial scenario of use.

The first part of the experience prototyping has consisted in exploring how trust can be built through Family on the Wings. We have started with a paper prototype presented to a Chinese family interested in the service. We have then developed a working website and put in touch four families in two separate sessions.

In the second phase of the experience prototyping we have asked families at the airport to go through all the steps that are part of the Family on the Wings service. We have tested our welcome kit (which was in particular loved by kids), fast track (which really made a difference in the family experience of the airport), and the cart ride (which was considered both convenient and entertaining).

Two of the web-based touch-points of Family on the Wings.

Back to the studio we have translated all the observations and insights into “How might we” questions, which frame the design opportunities.