As designers of products and services for transport spaces look to innovate in the sector, I believe passengers will see concepts borrowed from related sectors like supply chain logistics and manufacturing. OnTimeArrival is a smartphone application that, using realtime information and predictive algorithms, helps passengers arrive “just in time” to the gate at the airport, borrowing from “lean manufacturing” practice.

I’d like to propose a slight humanizing tweak to the OnTimeArrival concept, recognizing the realities of the typical airport and passenger. My proposal is twofold:

First, to encourage the use of OnTimeArrival-like applications to manage when people arrive at the airport. The goal should be to have as few people at the airport as possible, freeing capacity to serve those who need to be there in order to catch their flights on-time.

Secondly, as Ronan Delaney argues, passengers hate queues at the airport–I agree. I disagree on why–people are used to waiting for things in life. Passengers hate queues at the airport because they don’t know where they truly stand (in line): the entire process is disjointed, and therefore unknowable. This is not only anxiety provoking, but also misses opportunities for new and differentiated levels of service.

What if we addressed this anxiety with a smartphone-mediated “virtual queue” of the journey from arrival to gate, so passengers could always be assured they were on target to catch their flight? Furthermore, through a combination of real-time airport metrics, incentives (e.g. discounts, free passes to lounges, etc.) and clear instruction, passengers’ entry into various control zones/touchpoints (unsecured, security checkpoint, terminal, concourse and finally gate) could be managed, having the passenger present only when necessary. Crowding might be reduced, customer experience improved with better communication, and passenger/airline brand engagement improved with differentiated offerings.

In 2012, Control Group worked with OTG Management to re-imagine the restaurant and retail experience at La Guardia, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and Toronto Airports. With free and accessible iPads, passengers can now sit by their gate and order food and sundries directly to their seats, while being able to surf the web, check E-mail and remain updated about flight status. What if service touchpoints like this were placed in even more locations throughout the airport, becoming places for passengers to wait before being told to proceed to the next control zone?

With this “virtual queue” strategy, variability and exceptions can be addressed by an algorithm that accounts for current passenger position in the queue and scheduled takeoff time, promoting those that are late for their flights and telling those that are still early to grab another (discounted?) drink and wait, freeing capacity to serve those who are in a rush.

A big source of frustration at the airport is a lack of control–expectations are placed on passengers to be at a certain place at a certain time, but success relies on many things beyond the passenger’s control. If an airline can share some of that cognitive load and responsibility, even symbolically, by managing the passenger’s trip through the process with a smartphone-mediated “virtual queue”, both the passenger and airline can benefit from the efficiencies.

As creators, we hate to see the things we create go unused. It pains us to throw away something we worked hard to create. Whether you’re an author flinching at discarding a carefully-worded, but ultimately extraneous paragraph, a programmer who worked hard on a feature that’s getting cut from the project, or a painter who realizes his painting of Saint Sebastian probably doesn’t need quite so many arrows, it can be really difficult to let go of something you worked hard to create.

This happened to me recently. I’d written up an idea to be submitted to a client, and had some of my fellow CGers look it over for mistakes, suggest improvements, and generally give feedback. One person, Matt, deleted a line that I’d spent a good amount of time on trying to get it exactly right, and which I was very reluctant to remove. I asked him about it:

Me:  Why’d you edit out that line I put in the first paragraph?
Matt:  Because I thought it was an unnecessary generalization that doesn’t add to the concept and weakens your overall point.
Me:  Dang.  I worked hard on that, too.
Matt:  The thing is, your overall idea is really good concept, and I think the deleted line only detracts from it.
Me:  Notice I didn’t disagree; I only groused that I’d worked hard on it.

The annoying thing was that Matt was absolutely right! As much as I’d worked on that line—and it was a good line—it didn’t belong in the pitch. Truth be told, the pitch was better without the line, and the client loved the idea.

The more time we put into any one part of a work, the more loathe we are to cut it out. It is all too easy for us to fall into a mindset that won’t allow us to even consider removing something if we’ve put even a modicum of work into it. And that’s a perfectly understandable instinct. But we must nevertheless fight it.

The important thing to keep in mind is that, as creators, our loyalty is to our creation as a whole, not to any individual parts of it. It can be difficult, but we continually take the proverbial step back to look at the big picture and cut out what needs to be cut, and don’t mourn it as a loss or a waste.

Because it is not a waste.  No matter what we cut, if we remove it for the right reasons, the end result will be the better for it, and there will be that much more to be proud of.  Moreover, in many media, from carpentry to code, you can save what you’ve removed and use it later on another project. Finally, the more effort put into part of a project, even a part that doesn’t make it into the final creation, the more we learn from the process. It’s never a waste so long as you walk away having learned from the experience.