My stats show that you everyday user experience stories have the greatest mass appeal. You seemed to like the posting about Delta airlines. So here’s another quick one.
I went on a BA flight from Capetown to London recently and was astonished to find the food was very good. They seemed to have thought hard about what they could reasonably do to an economy class meal to make the experience better. They did two things:
- The made it TASTE nice. Which is, I think we can all agree, the most important thing they could do.
- They made the packaging look nice. Often you get a mystery meal with a plain foil lid with “chicken” or “beef” dot-matrixed on the top. Here the food packs had pleasant pictures on of what was inside. They were like the gourmet-meals-for-one packaging from a British supermarket. Looking at a tray full of colourful packaging made me feel more positive about the food before I even opened the packs.
Taking a photo of my meal would have required me to leap over other passengers to reach the aisle and my baggage locker. But luckily, it seems others are better prepared. At airlinemeals.net at least 500 people have sent in pictures of their airline meals for British Airways alone. Right.
There seem to be plenty more for other airlines too. Including Aeroflot which features this very special submission on the list:
The Chinese airlines all seem to offer things that westerners can’t fathom. But most seem to forgive them, simply because the packaging is so beautiful. As the UX community has (re)discovered over the last few years – people respond more favourably to and have a better user experience with beautiful products.
British Airways have got the right idea. Promise a good user experience with well designed packaging, then deliver against the promise with a tasty product.