Gmail Mobile App For Flights
My wife and I recently flew, SFO>PDX, to explore Portland and the Willamette Wine Region. The area has some of my personal favorites from the Pacific Northwest:
Willamette Pinots, Stumptown Coffee, Voodoo Donuts, artisanal farm fresh cuisine, cool bars, food trucks, and absolutely exquisite hipster handle bar mustaches.
The trip was awesome, except for my experience using the Gmail mobile app for flight confirmations and check-ins; which is not artisanal, hipster, or bespoke and it’s not even ironic in a retro way, it’s just awkward.
Listen, a while ago I made the switch to the Gmail app and haven’t looked back, I prefer it to iOS native email on my iPhone – I’m already a fan. It’s great but in a world where extraordinary is the new normal, I want more!
THE GOOD.
Flight Confirmations/Boarding Passes, DESKTOP
The design is clean, bold, and free of non-essentials.
The parsed flight confirmations are great! for my laptop, but not compelling enough for me to keep my laptop at the ready while dashing through the airport, in fact for most trips I carry just my iPhone (iPad maybe).
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPROVEMENT.
Flight Confirmations/Boarding Passes, MOBILE
The tight integration of Gmail, desktop needs to be on mobile phones and tablets. In the “Improved” design below, I stay within the basic design motif of Gmail for desktop, but bring the benefits of a clean, well-parsed flight confirmation to mobile. (BTW, the “check-in” button would not be displayed prior to the 24hr check-in time frame – make sense?)
Which is more clear?
Overall, what do you think? let me know in the comments.
THE FUTURE.
Soon we’ll simply check-in from the mobile inbox -OR-
better yet from an alert to the mobile screen where we’ll select a “Check-In” button -OR-
even better yet the phone will just tell us when the flight check-in is ready and await a simple reply back “Check me in!” and the boarding pass will be saved to all of my devices.
Okay, rant over, let’s start with an inbox check-in, which would be wonderful. The special flight confirmation email would simply present the “Add to Calendar” button – select it and done – flight added to my calendar. And in the case of flight check-in, the special email would present the “Check-In” button in the email inbox list view and then simply ask where I’d like to store my electronic boarding pass: Apple Passbook, Google Drive, Evernote, etc. something like this
The future is 1-touch, flight check-in from the Inbox.