Excess Baggage operated luggage storage, insurance, retail, and travel accessory services across 15 international airports and 18 rail stations.
As customer numbers and spend increased, the organisation committed to digitising its services to support a more coherent omnichannel experience.
The challenge was not introducing digital touchpoints, but ensuring that online services reduced friction in high-pressure, time-critical airport contexts while integrating cleanly with physical locations and operational systems.
Several services relied on fragmented booking and operational flows. The online booking process for left luggage and storage, in particular, required unnecessary steps and fields, increasing interaction cost at moments when travellers were already under stress.
In parallel, new services such as remote baggage check-in, confiscated item return, and excess baggage handling introduced additional complexity across channels.
The core challenge was to reduce interaction cost for customers while maintaining operational clarity for staff across locations.
Optimising the Booking Journey
The left luggage and storage booking flow was streamlined to reduce unnecessary steps and form fields, with a clear focus on speed, clarity, and predictability.
Key improvements included:
– Clearer progression through booking steps
– Reduced cognitive load during data entry
– Early visibility of pricing and storage duration
– Support for post-booking actions such as charge tracking and retrieval reminders
The goal was not only to improve usability, but to lower interaction cost at scale across multiple locations.
Service Blueprinting for Omnichannel Alignment
To support consistency across digital and physical touchpoints, I created service blueprints mapping frontstage user interactions, backstage staff actions, and supporting systems and dependencies.
In a security-constrained, time-critical environment like airports, service blueprints were essential to align customer-facing flows with staffing, logistics, and physical space constraints that could not be resolved at interface level alone.
This work exposed misalignments between customer expectations and operational reality, helping teams coordinate changes across departments rather than solving issues in isolation.
Solutions were typically piloted in a limited number of locations, validated against real operational constraints, and only then scaled across airports and stations.
Self-Service Luggage Weighing Kiosks
Passengers rarely know what their bags weigh until the check-in desk tells them. By then the uncertainty has become an unexpected fee or a delay, at the point where they have least time to deal with it.
The kiosks moved that check earlier. A passenger chooses the airline, the kiosk weighs the bag against that airline’s allowance, and the result screen shows where each bag stands for check-in and carry-on, with the options available if it is over.
The interface runs in more than 15 languages and takes NFC and coin payments. It also offers related airport services, which made it a low-cost service model for airports and airlines as well as a convenience for passengers.
Post & Fly
Problem to Solve
Travellers rushing through airport security with prohibited or restricted items faced a difficult choice: dispose of the items or find a quick, reliable solution.
Desired Outcome
Post & Fly was designed as a retrieval service built on:
– A streamlined online portal
– Timely collection and processing by staff
– A transparent 30-day retrieval timeframe
UX Methods
– Empathy mapping
– User interviews
– Mental-model analysis
Unified Staff Dashboards
Problem to Solve
In a fast-paced airport environment, fragmented dashboard experiences can lead to confusion, frustration, and decreased efficiency for both employees and customers.
Desired Outcome
– Unify the user experience across services
– Enhance employee productivity through clearer workflows
– Optimise for a fast-paced, time-sensitive environment