Gate UI for Simpleway

Our team: CEO, Product manager and me as Product designer

Tools: Sketch, Figma

Font: Lato

Duration: 3 months

GateUl, a system widely adopted across numerous global airports (e.g., Dubai, Prague, and Auckland airport), is used at gates. It enables staff to broadcast announcements to designated audio zones within the airport.

The feature set is about playing announcements from gate staff operators and the most common announcement category is boarding. Once boarding is selected, the announcements process follows the airport's procedures.

Our objective was to revamp the visual aspect of GateUl. We aimed for a cleaner, more contemporary design that supports both touch and mouse interactions. The interface is primarily designed for a 7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 1920x1080.

The goal with the client was to create new visuals and to review few UI modal views, while other team members were working on the hardware (touchscreen with microphone and physical button) for the new interface.

The focus group was comprised primarily of airport staff (2 members). There were no major interaction issues, and they actually praised the more suitable font size for the screen and the cleaner navigation, which improved their process.

Visually, the inspiration came from Tugman UI which have been introduced year ago, serving as the baggage interface for their staff.

A new navigation system is now in place to guide users through the boarding process, from preliminary steps to safety announcements.

Notably, there is a valuable improvement whilst the announcement is playing, UI is telling the user back how much minutes/seconds is left together with a text, playing in the background.