Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is continuously investing in innovation to improve its security processes in the effort to offer travelers and airliners the safest and most passenger friendly service. In this particular project, our design consultancy was asked by Schiphol’s R&D and IT departments to collaborate with them on optimizing the allocation of passengers to individual security desks.
The outcome is a smart dynamic system that guides passengers towards the ‘quickest’ free desk by connecting a variety of sensors, algorithms, physical components and user interfaces. Our primary role was to make sure that the various elements of the design work well together: for the passengers, the staff and the location. Clean, ergonomic, consistent design with clever details to ‘nudge’ people towards desired behavior. Together with other key partners the system has been tailored to this demanding environment with its very specific mix of requirements. The system is dynamic: it responds instantly to the actual situation. It is smart because it takes into account more factors than the naked eye can see or the human brain could quickly process.
In this multi-dimensional setting we were involved from beginning to end, from initial concepts to final observations and every design related aspect in between. We took pride in designing a direct but friendly digital user interaction: a sympathetic call to action that has proven to be understood by people with different cultural backgrounds. While designing and engineering the physical components of the system – like the custom built monitor housings and the curved banners with numbers – special attention was paid to easy maintenance, thus guaranteeing maximum up time. We made many functional prototypes for on-location testing, which helped to speed up the decision making process. And we have reviewed the synergy between system and security staff to achieve an optimal blend of ‘robotized’ and human service.
The dynamic wayfinding system has been successfully operational at Schiphol’s transfer security filter since the beginning of 2020. It will be rolled out to the other security filters in the course of this year.
