 So, I'll briefly introduce myself, I'm Vikas Vashisht, I work with design IT, I'm an anthropologist by qualification and by profession. Today we are going to talk about research and its role and how it helped transform the Indian national civil aviation policy. So, this is the project called Reimagining Flying Experience in India, wherein we worked with the government of India. So, to start off, you've been hijacked in true aviation terms, you can't go out of the room like other people who have already went out and you're bound here listening to me about my guilty pleasures of research, how I came to be a researcher before we jump on to how the project was conducted. So there are some key elements to the project with respect to design research, its role and before we jump into the project itself, I like to highlight how research can play an important role and how research or researchers are being found. So, I'll give you a brief example from my own life, at the age of 10 I was diagnosed with type 1 IDDM, which is type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, which means I had to take insulin shots before every meal and I belong to North India and being a diabetic in North India means that you will have a lot of people who are going to tell you about the possible remedies of diabetes, how you can cure diabetes and it's interesting to observe at the age of 10 that people associate the polar opposites in clinical terms, if you have diabetes you have too much sugar in your blood, so you have to cure it, you have to eat bitter gourd in the morning, which is like next to having rat poison in the morning, the first dosage. But what it did for me was to help analyze societal structures, I start observing at a very young age with respect to what people were doing, what their behaviors, what their practices were like, how they were forming their opinions, how they were behaving in public, how they were behaving in their private rooms, private chat rooms and all that. And also observing their behavior I started adapting, observation and adaptation, these are key things for any researcher to melt into the social fabric. Next, the most important thing with respect to solutioning of a thing I was diagnosed for diabetes, when you had to inject yourself with glass syringes and you had to carry that glass syringe and you had to carry that insulin vial throughout with you when you are traveling or so. It was a heavy package to deal with, so what I tried to do was I tried to compact it to some extent, I tried the box for my specs to keep my syringes, to keep my cartridges. And more often than not, I mean approximately 10 or 15 years later, after I was diagnosed, designed it, the company that I work for right now, they designed an insulin pen which not only eased out carrying of those syringes, that syringe was transformed into a pen as the entire bigger cartridge was reduced to a smaller cartridge, a pen refill kind of thing. So it became easier. So what my pain point was during the childhood, what I observed and what some researchers might also have observed as a pain point and how it transformed into a solution. That was an interesting journey for design it and for me as a user. So therein, I ended up with design it after approximately 25 years of me being a diabetic. So I can just call it that it was fate and we can wrap up this session because the research has nothing to do with it. But then again, I would be wrong. And I would be jumping into the project that we carried out with three major things. For any researcher to do what they need to do in order to arrive at a solution, observe, analyze, and adapt. These things will be the key to any research project to carry out to any design research project that you ever carry out. So the Ministry of Civil Aviation for India, they approached design it. Design it is a strategic design firm. We provide strategic design solution for all your business requirements, service requirements, product or other pain points and challenges. So they approached us. They said that we want to transform the Indian flyers flying experience digitally in a digital format. At the same time, they didn't want to compromise on any type of security as well. So in a nutshell, they wanted to transform the entire experience keeping security and enhancing passenger experience at the same point. India is a diverse country. So how do you go about it? How do you identify passenger behaviors, practices? And this is where in my prior experience of conducting a similar project came in handy. So you observe and you learn throughout. So what we did, how we designed the research process entirely. So we framed that we have to do some amount of desk research. What was the desk research that involved? It involved more than 50 plus documents. And to define research for any larger project such like this is you cannot just observe it from a single frame of reference. You can't just look at the user, the person who is going to fly out because there are multiple services, multiple practices that interact with that particular user. So you have to have a holistic view, holistic approach to it. What does holistic mean? I mean, we use that word quite loosely at times, but what does it mean? Especially in this particular frame of reference. So for us, it meant connecting with each and every point of interaction. So when we are saying 50 plus documents, we were not only studying what the passenger behaviors or passenger practices were at that point of time. We were also studying security regulation laid by Bureau of Civil Aviation for India. We were also studying practices by airline at that point of time. We were studying ecosystem players, players like cab drivers who would take care of transit from your home to airport and then from airport to your respective destination. We were talking to transaction players like Paytm, the likes of Moby Quick and all. So the idea was to capture each and every point of interaction and not leave anyone behind. This eventually led us to identify more than 30 plus individuals for carrying out our qualitative interaction sessions. I hate to call them interviews because from a research point of view, they are not interviews. You're not just asking question and that is very essential. Most often than not, we have seen the research today is more like what investigative journalism is. How do you feel? What do you feel? Targeted questions. But that's not research. The best research or the best form of interview you can ever have is a conversation. So that you are able to drive all your checklist of questions, you're able to carry out all those. So we had more than 30 plus interactions with such individuals. These individuals comprised of our flyers, people who were flying, people who were not flying. Why? Because like I said, you have to have a holistic point of view. There were many information gaps, pain points and challenges with respect to different points in the journey. People would say that I would get bored while I'm sitting in a flight. So that defines boredom in one particular mode of transportation. But when you say boredom, you have to compare it. What does enjoyment or engagement or a joyful experience means for you? So you have to talk to people who have never flown before. How they define engagement, how they define joy in another forms of travel. So you have to understand that. And that meant talking to people who were not flying and who might be flying in the future. Which eventually led to our more than three plus co-creation ideation sessions wherein we collaborated all our findings. We used tools like cluster mapping, we used tools like affinity mapping both that to find out what a particular cluster means and how those clusters of information are linked to each other. And finally we came up with one singular concept note. So when we delivered this presentation to the ministry, the thing was because we carried out so much of exhaustive research and again coming to the point of holistic research because it was holistic, we took care of the fact that there was no information gap left in that particular research and hence it was readily adopted by the ministry to form the national civil aviation policy. How did we carry it out? So in terms of our desk research, I will give you some brief snapshots of what were the highlights from our desk research. I mean we all know India at 22. And some key figures are, we are currently flying only 7% of our population. Which means 93% of our population is still open to fly and will be flying in the coming scenario. This is a big figure and this was a big figure not only for the ministry but for the major airline players as well. How did evolution of Indian flyer took place? So this is one of the outcomes of our second research. We identified consumer patterns over a period of time, how they have changed and why they have changed. The more important thing for us was to identify those drivers, identify those influencers. So the first thing of course was economic development, which basically meant that people have more disposable income to shed now. They can travel much more with respect to their disposable income. Also the incoming of finance institution, finance opportunity for people. It no longer meant that flying was not affordable anymore, flying was not a luxury. A person belonging to any particular socioeconomic category can fly. Now having identified financial institutions we also understood that Kingfisher and the likes of jet airways are no longer players anymore and the low cost airlines are the thing that is driving consumer practices right now. So all of this is connected and all of these are pushing factors towards contributing to a larger sale or a larger onslaught of more and more flyers. Of course, low brand loyalty is there. The customer is no longer loyal to a singular brand. I'll only fly Indigo. No, if you find a better deal with GoAir, you will go with GoAir. If you find a better deal with Spyjet, there is no longer a brand loyalty, but there is a service experience loyalty that is there. So every airline, every player, every ecosystem player, they'll have to identify that you have to deliver a great service experience in order to retain your customers. It's no longer the brand that keeps your customers. And of course, in every evolving ecosystem, it's no longer just a single player that is playing, that is earning revenues out of flights. I mean, there are players in market like Paytm, there are players in market like Olas and Ubers of the world who are making money like anything just from their aviation market. So moving on, of course, with respect to customer expectation and customer experiences, they are not singularly driven by aviation only. They are driven by their experiences amongst different sets, different spheres of life. And this helps us understand what are the global benchmarks and best practices when it comes to aviation, when it comes to different spheres of life. So these were some of the highlighting factors. Of course, the rise of social class that no longer applies to aviation only. It applies to every sphere. What is social class? We have an acquired social status when it comes to social media. If you have a bad service experience, if you are no longer satisfied by a particular delivery of a food product or a parcel or something, you will immediately tweet about it and you will have companies running off to you with remedies and solution for it. So it doesn't matter what your social economic classification is. Your social status, your social presence, it drives your customer experience for major companies as well. So that is one of the global practices that is now coming onto India. A couple of years ago, United Airlines, they had a bad experience. They misbehaved with a certain passenger and their stock dropped down by 3%. Similarly, we would all have remembered that Indigo customers were abusing flights. There were plethora of social media uprising with respect to empathizing or sympathizing with that passenger because he was ill-treated by the flight crew. So there were things that flight crew, that all the people in all these spheres, they will have to be very careful about when it comes to delivering a great customer experience. Then there is the whole idea of evolving experiences. Most of the international airports are no longer defined by just airport as a mode of transportation or as a mode of transit. Munich airport, they have a standing wave pool. So you would go with your family over the weekends, you'll just enjoy the standing wave pool, you'll surf and turf over it. So that is the kind of experiences people are looking forward to. Whereas what's happening in India is people were looking at airport as a mode of transportation, as a mode of transit. I'll just go there to take a flight. They are not looking forward to their experiences at the airport. Hence, when it comes to airport, you just think about flight, you don't think about anything else, you don't think about any sort of engagement. It comes where and what you can do is you can redeem your points or you can just use your credit card to have a lounge access. So because of the ever evolving ecosystem players, you are now defining your aviation experience with respect to what flying experience used to look like a couple of years ago and what it's looking like now. So these were the similar global benchmarks and practices that we dug deeper into to identify what will drive the Indian passenger journey. Then came primary research. So primary research meant that we talked to users, we tried to identify their pain points, their journeys. We had sets of ethnographic observations, which meant that we would take flight and we would observe people, how they are performing, how they are behaving, what are their practices when it comes to flying. And the interesting thing when you are presenting such data to an audience like government of India, they say that they don't have much time at their expense. And this is a problem that we have faced with respect to delivering research content more often than not. So how do you deliver, how do you sell research? So this graph came in handy. So if you see this particular graph is actually a culmination of more than 25 slides. So each and every slide that we identified the consumer journey in terms of flying with respect to their pre-airport experiences, their experiences at the airport, how the post, the flight, their experience is going to look like, each and every slide consisted of that particular experience and what the pain points were. And very important thing in research is to identify what these challenges mean for different people, how they are actionable. So this is an area wherein, I mean, research has always found its challenge, okay, this is good. So whenever you communicate research to any person or any stakeholder, they will say, yeah, these are very good findings, these are good insights, but what the heck do we do with it? And who should we target it to? So in order to do that, make them more actionable, what we did, we mapped them to their entire stakeholder set. But every insight, what every observation meant for every ecosystem player. Because that particular room at the Ministry of Civil Aviation, it was filled with players from different arenas. There were airline players, there were people like Ola, Uber, there were people from Paytm and Mobyquick and everyone else was there. They were looking for their own interaction points, they were looking for their own observations, they were looking for their own challenges. So we divided each and every paint point, each and every observation with respect to what it meant for each and every player in the room. So this helped us communicate that what different activities were. And we had to communicate it very clearly. So there is a part called airport management, then there is airport security. Some parts come under airport management, some come under airport security and then there are some which come under the center, some come under the state. We had to clearly define which challenge meant which activity or which solution for which particular player. So that was one, having identified these, what they meant for the future experience of the flyer. So the underlying themes or what we call experience principle for the flyer, we came onto these helped us define what the future journey is going to look like for the Indian flyer. So wherever the information gaps, so if the previous slide it talked about various pain points, they were pain points with respect to booking the flights. People were not very clear with respect to what the ongoing trends were. We know that at some points in life, some points in time, there were going to be flights which are going to be expensive and they are going to be cheaper at some point. But how do I make those decisions? What are those key things which are helping move that graph up and down? So empowering the passenger with the exact and right amount of information so that they can make that their flight decision with respect to the criteria that they are looking for. They're looking for criteria with respect to time, they're looking with respect to finances, which is the most affordable. So this was one of the things, empowering the passenger. Then again, creating immersive engagement. So a bigger challenge for the Ministry of Civil Aviation and for any airport management as of now is how do they manage an ever-growing crowd? They are not at all looking at how crowd management is going on. So their only idea as of now is to create those L-shaped or S-shaped queues. They were not looking at managing crowds from an engagement point of views. This is something that we can wait to the Ministry that a crowd will be crowd. There will be queuing, airports will always be crowded. You'll have to realize the fact, but you can always manage that crowd. You can create those immersive experiences so that one does not have to stand in a queue anymore to just pass their time. What was happening previously was that you were just standing in queue because if you reached the airport early, you had nothing to do at the airport except for window shopping and except for eating. So you have to define your experience at the airport so that it's that much engaging to a consumer that you don't feel the need to stand in a queue, right? So and more airports, I gave the example of Munich Airport. They are doing with a standing wave pool. And then there is Changi Airport at Singapore. So they have the motion cell out a wall and then they have a social media tree wherein you can engage and you don't feel the need to stand in a queue. The standing in queue should be a choice. It should not be a compulsion out of that you don't have to do anything. So that was one of the key takeaways that stuck with the ministry. And they are doing things about it. Then instilling a sense of familiarity and the next thing exploring and enabling the freedom to explore for the passenger. These were linked. Airports, they felt alienated to most of the people because there were boundaries created by the security guys, by the so-called khaki worthies at the airport that you are frisked. There are certain boundaries that you are allowed to go and you're not allowed to go. Instilling a sense of familiarity, deploying digital interventions, solutions that you feel like you know the place. Even at your own home, you know the places that you as a child, you know the places that you were supposed to go and the places you were not supposed to go. But still it was your home because you know where you're supposed to go. Instilling the same sense of familiarity to an audience, deploying digital interventions like AR solutions, like digital navigation solutions and guiding systems can instill that sense of familiarity and freedom to explore. And of course last but not the least, we use this term very loosely and in many aspects go paperless. But we don't deploy solutions with respect to it. But thankfully the ministry heard and we have a slide later as well post the implementation. Just a month ago, they have actually started piloting this solution. So this solution, which is now a part of the civilization policy, is now actually into practice at Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi airports. They are actually using facial biometrics to define their airport experiences to onboard the passengers. So coming back, what the future of aviation or future? I'll just give you five minutes. Yeah, so what the future of Indian passenger in terms of their flight look like they had, we are talking about a connected passenger, a connected airport, a connected experience, a connected systems and connected flying, everything is connected. And our speed spot is the intersection of all these. What does connected mean? Connected means then when you book your flight, you don't ever have to take out your ID card elsewhere. You book your flight with a particular form of identification and you are through with it. You reach the airport and that is how the next set of solutions are lined out with respect to that. So pre-airport, you have booked your flight with respect to Aadhaar or biometric enabled solution. You reach the airport, you just scan your biometrics and you are through. You don't have to take out your wallet or anything. Using and deploying technologies like blockchain, what you can do is you can do all the payment, all the transactions using your biometrics only. Because with blockchain, you have a shared ledger across the major financial institution, you have shared ledger. Whosoever is willing to take part in that particular blockchain, right? So you that and that in fact is the essence of paperless onboarding which is being deployed by Vistara nowadays. Of course, the multitasking when you are going to the airport and engaging with your different things at the airport. You have the paperless boarding, I've talked about it. You have digital security. So security was an important part. So mapping out your biometrics, once you have entered the system knows, you are tagged to your phone. The airport knows where you are, at which point in time. You deploy solutions like Bluetooth beacons and everything. And you have the exact digital map, heat map of where exact person or people are at the airport. So it was similar, I'm sorry, I'll have to rush through because they're kind of giving me the finger. So if you're not able to connect to the, you don't have to connect to the, you just have to connect to the internet when you're booking. Thereafter, you don't have to connect to the internet. So with respect to internet, how they are mapping you when you are at the airport. We talked about digital solutions and interventions like push Wi-Fi. So push Wi-Fi basically means that you don't need to connect to Wi-Fi. It'll be automatically connected once you enter the confines of the airport itself. It makes it easier from a digital security point of view to map each and every passenger that is there on the ground. If you don't have, then there is tagging. If you don't have something, then there is NFC tags, which are basically not exactly offline, but they help the security map you. So the idea is not to interface with security anymore. The idea is to take the personal responsible for security and move the entire security solution to a digital framework so that you feel like roaming around and you would automatically know against a digital guidance system that you are allowed to go to certain places or not. And this is we are deploying mixed realities. You can use your VR headsets. You can use your smartphones to use augmented reality applications, right? Of course, and after your journey has been completed for international passengers, biometric powered exit, which meant basically, you don't have to even scan your passport at the customs or at the immigration anymore. You just scan your biometrics and you are through with it. So this was a digital solution that was deployed. The ministry readily approved it and it has been deployed as Digi Yatra. It's there in the news and it's there on national website as well. They have started deploying the entire solution from February 2019 onwards. Paperless boarding is already on route. Digital solutions like blockchain and digital security will be on route in the next stages of the evolution. Some learnings from a research point of view, there are challenges when you're working with the government. Because the government, most of the people, more often than not, they are used to a certain standard, a certain benchmark of practices. So people like ministers, people like their secretaries, they're always traveling first class. They're always traveling the best in class services. So what they'll do is they'll come up to you, they'll say that, okay, I've seen this solution being deployed at Frankfurt Airport. Let's deploy this in India. What they forget is that the Indian context is entirely different. Indian customer, Indian passengers, their behaviors, practices, their cultural understanding is entirely different. And that was one of the challenge working with the government wherein again, we had to contextualize some of the solutions that they recommended in order to custom fit them to an Indian audience. That's not only the bad thing. There were some benefits of working with the government as well. One of the bigger benefit was that you got access to working with airport management and security. If you were conducting an airport research otherwise, you'll have to go through n number of channels to get a particular authorization to conduct an interview with an airport security personnel. They would not give you that information. But working with government, you had direct paths to go and talk up to any security personnel with respect to what the security guidelines and what the security protocols are at a particular airport. So we actually cut through many of channels which helped reduce the time. So the entire project was carried out in 2.5 months. It would have taken more than seven or nine months. If you were involved in the bureaucratic practices of getting authorization, but because we were working with the government, we had direct access. This was covered in 2.5 months. Holistic research I have talked about. And of course, human-centered digital interventions. So everything, every solution that we recommended, it was not human-centered, not only from a passenger point of view, but again from a point of interaction, point of view. So whosoever from airline was interacting, we took into consideration their part as well. We empathized with them, understood their story. And the security protocols, which were supposed to be kept there, were kept there. I won't take much of your time. Yeah, if you guys have any questions, you can reach me anytime. This was the impact, the thing that I was talking about, this is directly a copy-paste of what I just presented and what I presented to the Indian government. Paperless boarding has already started at Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad Airport, Vistara Airlines is doing it. And if you have any questions, you can shoot and