Case study
Airport shuttle displays
People waiting for an airport shuttle are thinking about their flight. So the shuttle screen shows what they care about right then. Destination, flight number, status, terminal or zone, and whether the connection is on time.
What it does
The shuttle boards look like the departure boards people know from the terminal, adapted for the shuttle. They're part of the same passenger information system as the onboard stop displays.
Most of the people reading them are passing through and don't know the local bus network. They're looking for a flight, so the screen talks in flights.
Why it's hard
Flight info is dense and it changes fast. The flight, destination and status come first, and the terminal or zone has to stay visible. The board also works in two languages and has to be readable from a distance.
Too dense and the screen turns into a spreadsheet. Too sparse and the passenger still has to ask someone. I aimed for enough rows to be useful and enough space to read them.
Passengers already know how to read a departure board. Use that.
How I built it
I built the display app and the flight-info layouts. The board is a table with a clear column order. Time, flight, status, then terminal or zone.
Every color means something. Green is on time, red is delayed, yellow marks destinations and zones. The header and footer carry the airport's look and a closing message, so the board feels like part of the airport.
What I built
- A departure board with time, destination, flight number, status and terminal/zone.
- Bilingual labels and per-airport branding.
- Status colors that stay readable on a dark background.
- A layout that scales from a single shuttle screen up to a wider board.
- Integration with the passenger information system.
Choices I made
Copy the terminal board
People already know how to read a terminal departure board, so I kept the same layout. There's nothing new to learn, and the screen is useful from the first look.
Color only where it counts
Green, red and yellow only show up for things the passenger may need to act on. No color is there just to look nice.
Dense, with room to breathe
The board fits a useful number of rows without becoming a wall of text. Column widths and row height do as much work as the font.
One layout, many airports
Each airport gets its own branding on top of the same layout. So every board belongs to one family instead of being a one-off.
The boards
The result
A passenger glances at the board and knows whether their connection is on time. Each airport's board looks like it belongs there.
I used the same approach as on the onboard screens. Work out what the person in front of the screen needs, then make that the biggest thing on it.