Delta, Reimagined

Reinventing Delta Airline Carry-on

Timeline: February 2023 – March 2023

LUMA Institute Human-Centered Design Thesis

The Airline Industry is poised to generate a projected revenue of $779 billion in 2023, reflecting a substantial increase from 2019, driven by rising demand for air travel and the adoption of new technologies, as per Gitnux Blog. In this project, my primary focus is on enhancing the traveler’s experience with Delta Air Lines, particularly after check-in and improving their overall airport experience leading up to their flight.

Smartphone with a dark blue screen displaying the Delta Airlines logo.
Delta Airlines logo with a white airplane featuring Delta branding against a light blue background.

Project Overview

  • The Airline Industry is projected to generate $779 billion in revenue in 2023, a significant increase from 2019 due to increasing demands for air travel and adoption of new technologies, according to

    For this project, I focus on modifying the traveler’s experience at Delta Air Lines once they’ve checked-in and improving their airport experience, leading up to their flight experience.

  • As a traveler, the flight experience can be stressful, worrisome, and tiring.

    I will be honing in on the parent user type, delving into their travel journey and experience with their children. The flying experience begins even before the plane takes off. I aim to devise a solution that allows parents to enjoy a stress-free experience at the airport, without worrying about losing their belongings, while ensuring they can travel comfortably with their children and navigate the airport with ease as they wait to board their plane.

  • Create a concierge service for your carry-on.

    Modify user journey and present optional package, Delta SkyCarry

  • The service, Delta SkyCarry, offers travelers an optional package that can be chosen after completing the check-in process. With Delta SkyCarry, a designated robot is assigned to deliver the traveler’s chosen carry-on and belongings directly to their gate.

    At the gate, a Delta employee loads the carry-on into an overhead bin corresponding to the traveler’s seat number. This allows travelers to enjoy the airport amenities without the stress of keeping track of their belongings. Moreover, Delta SkyCarry saves time by eliminating the need for travelers to search for an available overhead bin and load their carry-on themselves, while also ensuring they remember where they placed their belongings.

Meet Luca

Meet Luca, a 32 year old father to triplet daughters. He enjoys traveling and creating new memories with them, but finds himself in a tough situation! He definitely can use an extra pair of hands when traveling to manage his belongings while entertaining his daughters, helping them on their potty breaks, and preventing temper tantrums before boarding their flight.

A profile picture of a smiling man with glasses and dark hair, wearing a black shirt, next to a quote about travel and caregiving for daughters. The rest of the image contains text detailing his name, Luca Accardi, his marital status as married, daily and rare uses of technology, his aspirations, and his goals and frustrations related to traveling with his daughters.

How Might we

make the flight experience the best part of the traveler’s experience?

Creative Matrix

I needed a wide range of ideas to solve this problem and the structure of the Creative Matrix is useful to stimulate, cross-pollinate, and generate ideas that might have not crossed my mind. What ideas would best cater to our problem statement and serve Luca? Generating a wide range of concepts helped me think of ideas from a fresher perspective!

A categorized list of travel and airport services and amenities using sticky notes: yellow notes for ideas, green notes for alternative ideas, with various notes indicating services such as massage, digital apps, virtual reality, and transportation arrangements in multiple sections including entertainment, food and drinks, and digital media.

Importance/Difficulty Matrix

Now that I’ve widened my scope, my team and I are ready to narrow the ideas and converge them from my creative matrix, helping me prioritize item tasks quickly, resolve differing opinions, and help my team develop a plan of action.

Of the seven ideas, in an importance/difference matrix, we agreed on solving the problem with the highest ROI (return of investment).

A chart displaying ideas with varying levels of importance and relative difficulty, including notes about luggage check, bag placement, and massage services.

We found a solution by merging 2 different ideas into one. Imagine a hotel concierge service that takes your carry-on and belongings of choice, delivers it to the gate where it is placed in the overhead bin before your boarding time. 

Conceptualization - Concept Poster

Let’s start by thinking BIG! With a concept poster, my team and I are prototyping our idea for Delta SkyCarry and sharing the concept of a concierge service for carry-ons by using imagery and visual aids to help provide a roadmap for our colleagues to understand the journey of our travelers, from the time they check-in to taking off and flying to their destination.

When we introduced the idea, we provided answers to prompts that would help our colleagues know

  • Who is this service for

  • What problem we are solving, and 

  • What the big deal is

Infographic about luggage handling, showing travelers with luggage, different types of luggage, and digital robot solutions for check-in and baggage transfer at airports.

Thinking broadly about this concept, we also expanded on areas where (1) project might fail, how we should go about (2) prototyping + testing, and (3) how we might measure success for this product. 

A three-column table with strategies for testing luggage handling systems. The first column discusses reasons it might fail, including technical difficulties and misplacement. The second column outlines plans for prototyping and testing, such as testing new roles, location tracking, robots, and customer journey testing. The third column lists success metrics like traveler satisfaction surveys, destination accuracy, luggage loss rate, and correction time.

To make our idea tangible and feel real, we created an illustration to demonstrate our traveler’s journey! Since this is our first prototype for Delta SkyCarry, knowing our parent’s journey is so important! And receiving feedback and support from our colleagues to help us evolve this idea is even more helpful. 

Flowchart illustrating the airport traveler process: Person checks in at desk or via robot; traveler helps luggage onto robot who navigates to terminal; traveler boards aircraft; luggage is on board and overhead; children explore airport activities; robotic guide tracks location; parents monitor on app; travelers check flight info; board aircraft.

Prototyping + Testing

Focusing on the traveler’s experience interacting with the robot, we wanted to get our ideas out onto paper quickly and test them along the way, while taking notes on how to improve the product and user journey so that parents like Luca can feel more relaxed throughout their travel experience. 

A black-and-white illustration showing a woman with a child at a robot check-in kiosk at an airport, with colored icons and text explaining a step-by-step boarding process, including checking in, scanning boarding passes, entering baggage numbers, verifying seat information, paying, applying stickers, and loading carry-on luggage.

We used a Model Making method for our rough prototype so that it’s interactive with the tester. As the tester interacts with the screens with additional props (for example, scanning their plane ticket, or loading their luggage), we can see real-time what concepts worked and what concepts were a hard pass. The rough model helped me identify weaknesses in our design to improve upon. 

Thinking-Aloud Testing

This testing format allowed my tester to narrate their experience while performing the given task of going through the journey to checking their carry-on. This gave me the opportunity to make the journey better and manage risks that might arise.

Table with three columns titled Test Plan, Major Findings, and Recommendations. The first row indicates 4 Participants in the Test Plan column, with a quote about scanning a boarding pass in Major Findings, and recommendations about linked tickets and extra steps in Recommendations. The second row indicates Remote in Test Plan, with a quote about payment in Major Findings, and suggestions to show SkyCarry fee and allow SkyMiles payment in Recommendations.

Projected Outcomes

Impact this project would have on Delta Air Lines:

  • Gives Delta Air Line a competitive edge to keep improving and growing as new technology is adopted

  • Increase of customer retention as traveler’s can pay for SkyCarry with their SkyMiles

Lessons Learned

With over 170 million passengers who fly Delta each year, this project showed me the importance of strategy and thinking strategically. How can Delta SkyCarry add value in expanding Delta Air Lines? What is in it for the key stakeholders?

Delta SkyCarry welcome screen with language selection options including English, Español, Português, Français, Italiano, Deutsch, Nederlands, Русский, עברית, العربية, हिंदी, 日本語, 中文, 한국어, বাংলা, Connect button and an airplane tail logo in the top right corner.