Hike One helps SITA design the world's fastest baggage drop-off

Controlled experiments as a shortcut to innovation

The best way to research the future, is to run controlled experiments in the real world. Which happens to be messy and uncontrollable. So, armed with prototypes cobbled together from cardboard, duct tape and an iPad Pro, we set off to airports and field-tested our designs. Until every passenger was gone and luggageless in under 60 seconds.

Think global, design local

Hike One designed an interface that predicts the most common operations for individual nationalities and languages during specific periods of the day. The system speeds up the average drop-off time significantly.

Trust is inspired by what you see

The appearance of the display switches to the house style of passenger's chosen airline automatically, inspiring immediate trust. Which minimises hesitation. Which minimises, well… you know the drill by now.

On average departure process at Incheon’s Airport: 38 minutes

International standard: 60 minutes

Don’t push when a nudge will do

Sometimes all it takes is a gentle nudge to save a huge amount of time. Adding the ‘Please enter’ screen, thus inviting the next customer in line to step forward, proved a simple way to make a big difference.

Fast access for airport staff

In case of last minute contingencies, airport staff is able to quickly access and update the system. No more waiting lines here, either.

“We wanted to offer passengers a great user experience at baggage check-in. That became a reality thanks to a productive collaboration with Hike One.”
Reinout van der Meulen
Senior Portfolio Manager BagDrop at SITA

The crew

To realise Sita’s Drop & Fly system, we joined forces with two partners: Van Berlo for physical product design and De Voorhoede for front-end development.

Design sprint in a crowded airport

We admit, we are huge fans of the Google Ventures design sprint. Cranking up the pressure, designing and validating a solution in just five days... That’s hard to beat.

“We learned an awful lot from simulating the drop-off experience in crowded airports. The prototypes we used for testing were cobbled together from cardboard, duct tape and an iPad.”
Hylke van Maaren
Design Director