Delta Air Lines at the
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020
Company: Delta Air Lines | Date: July 2019 - January 2020
In 2020, Delta Air Lines made a splash by presenting and having a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV. Delta wanted to show off the technology they were implementing to enhance the customer experience for flying and making their employee’s jobs easier.
Role: Experience Design Lead for Delta Air Lines
Technology Used: Sketch, Invision, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, SARCOS Exoskeleton technology, Parallel Reality Screen Technology
Background
CES 2020 was the first time any airline had any sort of booth or keynote presence. I was brought onto the project as a key design resource for all four of the innovations that Delta Air Lines was planning to showcase at the convention.
Delta showed off 4 main innovations in their booth:
Exoskeleton Technology from their partnership with SARCOS
Parallel Reality Technology from the partnership with Misapplied Sciences
Delta Operations Technology (DALSIM)
Fly Delta: The customer experience of the future
I got to be the sole designer from Delta and main point of contact for the experience design and partnership with SARCOS and Misapplied Sciences. I consulted on the experiences for DALSIM and Fly Delta.
Exoskeleton Technology with SARCOS
The SARCOS Exoskeleton experience at the Delta booth contained 2 main parts:
A Single arm demo where attendees could test out the exoskeleton technology with one arm to lift heavy objects that no human could lift on their own
A full suit demo by a trained operator doing tasks that would show its relevancy to Delta
I was tasked with creating the attendee experience and booth design for both parts of the SARCOS experience.
Single Arm Test Experience
For this experience, we had three main areas that I needed to create an experience for:
The line for attendees to wait in to get to the experience
The experience itself
How the experience looked to attendees that were just passing by
Area 1: Line for the Single Arm Experience
For this area of the experience, I took a lot of nods from how Disney Parks design their wait lines. Disney focuses on making sure that every part of a ride is part of the experience, which includes the area where attendees are waiting to ride the ride.
SARCOS has a long history of development and innovation that they used to create the exoskeleton product they have today. For the line, I thought they should put that on display - in this instance, with their development cycle of prototypes for ‘end effectors’ (essentially the hands) for their suits.
This would create visual interest, give attendees something to do while waiting in line, and also entice other attendees walking by to see what that cool robot hand was all about and what it had to do with Delta Air Lines.
Area 2: The Single Arm Experience itself
I attended Delta Air Lines’ coordination meeting with SARCOS at their headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT to present my designs for the experience.
During that time, we also got to test out the single arm experience they would be showcasing at our booth at CES (left). From there, I suggested that instead of heavy plate weights, that we use a suitcase filled with weights.
This visual would help the attendees understand how Delta Air Lines would be utilizing this technology and also create visual interest to attendees passing by.
Full Suit Demo Experience
For this demo, we wanted to be able to show how Delta would be using the full exosuit technology within the airline industry. We knew that we’d have a small area for the operator to move around in, but the challenge was how to show all of the things that Delta wanted to use the suit for within such a small space: Maintenance for safety and moving heavy parts around while repairing the aircraft and moving heavy bags.
I created a small facsimile of an aircraft to help ground the user in the overall experience that an exoskeleton user would be operating in. The biggest push I had here was to include the iconic front of a jet engine.
Parallel Reality Technology with Misapplied Sciences
Parallel Reality Technology is a display technology that allows multiple people to look at the same screen at the same time and each see something totally different.
As the Lead Designer for this innovation, I worked with the Misapplied Sciences team to identify which of their multitude of demos would be best to shocase in a less than 10 minute demo to the attendees at CES. Once we had identified the best demos, I created the experience that the attendees would go through at the booth.
To learn more about the technology itself, check out Misapplied Science’s Website.
To view an attendee walkthrough, check out this Youtube video.
Parallel Reality Booth Experience
Attendee Check-In
Before attendees got in line, we had them create their own mock Boarding Pass that they would use to personalize their experience and better illustrate how Delta Air Lines was planning to use the technology.
2. Attendee’s Boarding Pass
3. Surprise Peek
Since the technology allowed us to beam a specific message to a set area on the ground, we used this to our advantage to create “Surprise and Delight” moments for attendees. This enabled us to accommodate even more attendees to experience Parallel Reality, even though the full experience had a limited amount of people that could pass through per day.
Attendees at the front of the line would see a special message: “Get ready to experience Parallel Reality!”
4. Experience 1
Mock up looking back at the mirrors and podiums
5. Experience 2
View over the podiums, looking at the Parallel Reality Display
Once attendees checked in, they would receive a physical boarding pass with a QR code that would be used within the experience.
A physical boarding pass gave the attendees a souvenir to take with them and gave us the opportunity to explain the experience further.
I created this design to roughly mimic Delta’s current boarding pass design (albeit stylized.)
Attendees looking into the experience that were just passing by would see a different message: “Want to see what parallel reality is all about? The line starts just around the corner!”
Once the attendee is in the first room they, along with three other people, line up in front of a podium of their choice. We utilized printed 3D models of locations to hint at the attendee what they might be seeing.
The attendee will see one of the title cards for the 4 cities that we selected.
Afterwards, the attendees will be encouraged to swap places with the other attendees in the experience to see how the screen changes depending on which area they are standing in.
Photo from CES 2020 of the live experience
After the attendees view the content at eye level over each of the podiums, they will be asked to step to the front of the room where the display is and instructed to turn around. An array of 12 mirrors is set up behind each of the podiums, angled in such a way so that the attendee can see that the same display is showing 12 different images at the exact same time.
After viewing the content in Room #1, attendees will move to the second room. An employee will ask each attendee to stand in front of a check-in kiosk and scan the boarding pass they were given.
Once scanned, a camera mounted above the second room will identify each attendee and track them around the room. The Parallel Reality screen in Room #2 will show each attendee the name they entered on their boarding pass, and the city they selected to ‘fly’ to.
Attendees were encouraged to walk around the room to see how the screen stayed the same for them even as they moved. Attendees were also encouraged to look over the shoulder of another attendee to see that what the other attendee was seeing on the screen was different.
Outcomes
Delta Air Line’s CES debut made big waves. The Misapplied Sciences experience within the DAL booth won several awards for the technology and experience.
Delta then went on to pilot the Misapplied Sciences technology in the Detroit Airport. (Article here.) I got the opportunity to help design this experience alongside the experiences we were designing for CES 2020.
