Design This Day | Episode 6

AI could make an economy seat feel like first class.

Bernadette Berger joins Teague Futurist Devin Liddell to talk about the future of commercial aviation, solving baggage anxiety, identifying tasks that are better suited for humans versus AI, and what raising a toddler can teach you about business leadership. Bernadette is the Director of Innovation at Alaska Airlines. She's also a self-professed airplane nerd with over a decade of experience designing the aircraft architecture of some of the world's largest commercial jets. 

Scene: You're sitting at the kitchen table, booking your next family vacation online. You tell the airline's AI agent everything you need, a sunny destination with plenty of activities for a rambunctious nine-year-old and an adventurous seven-year-old.

"Here are a few options that fit your criteria."

You swipe through the suggestions. Each option includes transportation from the airport and a suggested itinerary, with activities like a wildlife sanctuary tour, a harbor cruise, and a beach day. You pick the one labeled, "Off the Beaten Path." You don't want to contribute to overtourism.

It's travel day. Getting to the airport has been a breeze. You and your family get out of the autonomous vehicle, which featured in-car TSA screening. You all stride into the terminal. An airline employee spots your group and hurries over with a warm smile. He's been expecting you. He tells you that some personalized upgrade options have just now become available, seats together for the whole family, along with an option to transfer everyone's bags directly to the hotel. This is the future of air travel.

Devin Liddell: Before we jump into our conversation, full transparency, you and I previously worked together at Teague. You're an industrial designer by training. Do you ever have a hard time turning off the industrial designer inside your head?

Bernadette Berger: Yeah, I have been known to get the CAD out and just get back in there and just be like, "Okay, we've been talking about this for a while. Can I just show you what I mean?" So I think that that's a part of me that doesn't turn off. What I am learning though is how to speak the language of baggage handling systems and how to speak the language of mobile technology and airport technology and robotics, all these other pieces that I haven't had as much time in, in order to be able to test these things and scale these different solutions.

Devin Liddell: You mentioned baggage, and you and I have talked about this in the past too, but in a lot of the work that I've done in commercial aviation, I've always been a little bit fixated on what I describe as the small problems that feel big. Baggage is one of those, right?

Bernadette Berger: Oh, yeah.

Devin Liddell: It shouldn't actually be that big of a deal, but it is not a small anxiety. It ends up being a big anxiety and that big anxiety ends up affecting things actually that don't have anything to do with baggage. It affects the boarding process.

Bernadette Berger: Yeah, I would say the problems in baggage, you might consider them small because of how infrequently they happen, how infrequently a bag gets lost, gets damaged, you don't get to fit that bag in the bin. But man, when that happens to you, it is a completely emotional trip changing experience. I guarantee you, Devin, you've got a story of when you lost a bag or couldn't bring that bag on board and you needed something in there, and it is a memory you have, more than what you did on that trip, more than what you ate, more than who you saw, what you stayed.

I would say the problems in baggage, you might consider them small because of how infrequently a bag gets lost...but when that happens to you, it is a completely emotional trip changing experience.

So it's big because it really matters to our guests, and it should, right? It's your stuff. You need it. And that anxiety that is caused from checking a bag or that anxiety that you described at the gate, I think a lot of that is because it's your last unknown. You know where you're going to sit, you know what movie you're going to watch or that you're going to work on the plane. You know that you're going to order a fruit and cheese plate and a ginger ale. And the last unknown is, will there be space for my rollaboard bag to fit in the bin?

The last bit of anxiety, we see, causes a lot of anxious behavior. We call it the lurch. Everyone's lurching around the door. Right? And if you're in a boarding group A or boarding group B, you've got to sort of finagle yourself around people who are waiting to get on the plane. I think a lot of that is caused by that anxiety, and there's things that we're doing to increase confidence, carry-on confidence so that you can just board with ease and not have to have that big stress before you fly.

Devin Liddell: In some ways, I'm just kind of short selling it by saying that baggage is just about anxiety. Baggage actually intersects with some really big themes, not the least of which are justice and community. And what I mean by that is that there's this sense of like why did I pay to check my bag, when I get to the gate and people who are gaming the system, bring their bag, the rubber bag and get it checked as a courtesy? So there was an injustice baked into that.

Bernadette Berger: Yes, and this is why I become the not great dinner party guest because I am so-

Devin Liddell: Do not ask Bernadette about this.

Bernadette Berger: ... fascinated and nerdy about this topic. I could talk about it all day. Buckle in. Seriously, it's so interesting, right? And that justice piece, whew. That gets right to the core of your emotional state, right? This isn't fair. I've got a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, and that is a phrase that is thrown around a lot at our house. "That's not fair," right?

Devin Liddell: For airlines, everything you bring on the plane is considered payload. The cost of fuel doesn't change whether the payload is in the belly of the plane as checked baggage, or if it is in the overhead bin as carry-on baggage. In some of my work, I've suggested that carry-on baggage may become a thing of the past altogether, and passengers would instead drop off their bags, fitted with RFID tracking tags, on their way to the airport and reunite with them at the hotel. But for now, passengers often have anxiety about where their bags will be stowed, and airlines need to take that into account. Bernadette says it all comes down to choice and predictability.

Bernadette Berger: So when we're approaching this, what is fair? And what is justice? I think it's just getting to the heart of I've paid for this. I'm only going to be traveling this one time this year, or I haven't traveled in a long while and I just don't want any surprises. I just want to know that there's a space for me, there's a space for my things. I'm not going to be embarrassed to have my bag fished out of the plane and checked late. I'm not going to find out something that's really disappointing while I'm trying to board. And I think that gets to the heart of it.

So a lot of the things that we're doing is just, is it predictable? Is it really clear? Do you have the confidence that what you are planning to do with your bag, your bag gets to travel in that way? It's your choice how you'd like it to travel.

Devin Liddell: Right, totally. When you think about what air travel will look like even a decade from now, I'm curious what your thoughts are on how air travel will look and feel different in the decades to come. When you think about there's new airframes coming online, there's new ways, new propulsion systems. We're grappling with what it means to have sustainable flight. For some aircraft, that won't mean huge changes because they'll be using sustainable aviation fuel and it's just a drop in fuel. But for other aircraft, that use hydrogen or electricity, those will be very different experiences of air travel. Not to even mention things like the return of dirigibles, the return of blimps, which is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. Anyway, when you think about how air travel might look in a decade from now, what's your sense as to what will be the most prominent features that we don't currently experience?

Bernadette Berger: I think innovation will come in sort of two prongs. I think premium will become more premium. You've already seen that hub and spoke as a business model is not really how people want to travel. They don't want to take three flights. They want to be on a smaller airframe and they want to go at supersonic speeds, or they want to enjoy what it feels like to have charter flight, private flight in a more public setting, and they want to do it out of smaller airports. So I believe that we'll see premium get more premium on more direct, less frequent pairings of stations. And those companies who really lean into that will be the travel mode.

So you've talked about this a lot, Devin, of designing for the seams. So when you think about Uber Elevate, where they're connecting the dots between your car ride on your helicopter ride to your airplane ride, I see companies really leaning into that full stream of travel of what should I pack? And how am I getting to a travel port? And what are the different modes of travel? And very, very high touch by humans. Right?

I believe that we'll see premium get more premium...and I think that we will see all types of innovation where people are willing take on more of that work themselves, but they'll have just as much personalization as premium guests.

The other side of that is I think we'll see economy travel really innovate and change. So I anticipate we'll see the same passion and drive to travel, but people will be willing to have something that's much more self-serve, much more automated, and a very different method of travel.

So what would it look like if you had a completely AI driven airline? There's no one at the airport for you to talk to. There's no lines because maybe you're not bringing any bags. Maybe there's some clothes for you when you arrive in Tokyo. Maybe that's what the hotel provides for you. You might not have a seat like you have today, you might not have windows.

I think that we will see all types of innovation where people are willing to travel under different circumstances, take on more of that work themselves, but they'll have just as much personalization as the premium guests. It will just be provided for by AI assistance. It'll be provided for by automation, by your own AI concierge who knows how you like to travel and will put these pieces together for you. So I think we'll see those two different styles of travel really start to diverge and continue to diverge, and businesses start to innovate in those spaces.

Devin Liddell: These two tracks of innovation reflect the growing wealth gap, not just in the US, but around the world as well. On one hand, passengers with means will expect even more luxurious experiences and more direct flights. On the other, budget travelers may see faster, more streamlined journeys powered by AI. But as flying becomes more accessible for everyone, airlines are already making adjustments to deal with an issue that has been in the news a lot in recent years, overtourism,

Bernadette Berger: You and I probably watched all of the Samantha Brown and Rick Steves shows about, "Hey, go to Cinque Terre." Well, Cinque Terre cannot handle any more people, right?

Devin Liddell: Yeah. Barcelona does not want any more people. Yeah.

Bernadette Berger: And I think more and more cities will introduce a tax for people to travel there during those peak tourism areas, to preserve their own culture.

So with the amount of personalization and natural language search tools and ways where you can really use AI to do that searching for you, what I believe is we'll see more people try different all-new destinations than ever that they've never tried before, because they'll go to Croatia instead of Barcelona or they'll go to Costa Rica instead of Barcelona. They'll try different locations that they maybe had not been introduced to before, but are personalized recommendations for you, dear traveler, based on how you like to travel.

I think that's where those relationships or the designing for those seams between those modes of travel matter. Getting to the best snorkel site in Belize requires a big airplane like a 737, and then a little smaller island hopper plane. And those are pretty seamless transitions when you book with Alaska. In order to get to these different destinations, I think a lot of the times it's just how many tabs do you have open? When you're booking-

Devin Liddell: Me?

Bernadette Berger: Yeah. Yeah, well, that's-

Devin Liddell: I'm sorry.

Bernadette Berger: ... not a direct assault here.

Devin Liddell: I thought that was an accusation only because I actually have an extraordinary number of tabs open. So sorry, I just was alarmed there.

Bernadette Berger: Yeah. Yeah. But when you're booking a trip, an all new destination you've never been to, it's easy to find lots of information. It's hard to understand what's right for you, what's right for you and your family, what's right for what you're willing to do. Maybe you're not willing to go on the bumpy road, but the little island hopper is great to get out of the overtourism locations.

So there's so many different trade-offs that you need to make, and we've spent the last 10 years creating great e-commerce tools to give you all the information. If you want to know about 100 hotels in Barcelona, boom, here they are. But trying to understand which one has the right hotel for your kids to swim in or has a setup where you can actually not listen to your kids snoring when you're sleeping or some of these nuances-

Devin Liddell: Probably the other way around, but-

Bernadette Berger: Or it doesn't have too many stairs, so that grandpa can come along. And that's all something that you can describe if you were telling me as your travel agent. And in some countries, the use of travel agents is still really, really high because of just the overwhelm and decisions to be made. So we've invested a lot in AI tools to give you those personalized recommendations throughout the booking journey.

We've invested a lot in AI tools to give you those personalized recommendations throughout the booking journey.

Devin Liddell: My sense as to where this could go near future term is that AI in airports in particular will deliver a lot of efficiency, so I think there's going to be some big gains there. But I think one of the potential costs of all that efficiency is a bit of a coldness to it, that it feels not so human. So that's all to say, I'm curious, what's your take on how we should parse out tasks that AI should take on versus tasks that should remain intensely human within the air travel experience?

Bernadette Berger: Have you ever heard of the framework HABA-MABA?

Devin Liddell: HABA MABA is an acronym that stands for humans are better at and machines are better at. It was introduced by psychologist Paul Fitts in 1951, and outlines which tasks are best suited for machines and which are better left to humans. For example, tasks that are repetitive and require deductive reasoning are better for machines, but tasks that require an ability to improvise and exercise judgment are best left to humans. Bernadette says we can upgrade that framework to reflect today's AI capabilities.

Bernadette Berger: So when we look at what are great candidates for applying AI in our AI strategy, we've got a clear sort of list of four ways that AI and humans interact and where you want to have AI assisting a human in their decision making because there's nuance and there is a lot of uncertainty in the data, all the way down to this is where AI rocks because it's making decisions fast, it is repeating things over and over based on clear sets of rules. And that's not necessarily where humans are great at because honestly, that's just a lot of rule-based knowledge that you have to be trained up on and know.

So when we apply AI and automation to, for example, the gate, we look at all of those tasks that are very rule-based, that are very repeatable, and that need to happen very quickly. And a lot of that is done by the gate agents. The gate agents are... You see them working on the desktop, very intense programming to resolve any discrepancies in a guest's ticket, to make sure we understand what our weight and balance, is to be able to make sure that we verified everyone's passport before they leave the country. All of these things are just double checking.

When we apply AI and automation to the gate, we look at all of those tasks that are very rule-based, that are very repeatable, and that need to happen very quickly. And a lot of that is done by the gate agents. 

That's where we're applying automating seat assignments. When you want to fly with your kids, you want to sit together. So that actually is a pretty complex rules-based task that we've now automated. There's a number of tasks like that. It's not to make the customer service agent, the gate agent go away. In fact, it is all about taking all of that workload off the gate agent's plate so they can do the thing that they're great at.

What they're great at is talking to my mom, who is an anxious flyer and just really wants to double check, "Am I at the right spot? Am I ready to go?" Agents are there to talk to guests with special service requests. "Hey, I see that you've told us that you are a guest who is also blind. What would be the best way for me to support you during boarding?" Being able to have these conversations. But if an agent is too busy working on all these manual tasks, they don't have the time to deliver remarkable customer care.

So all of our AI tools are about automating those steps or keeping the human in the loop so that the agent can make the judgment call if we should follow the rule here or not. Stressed out mom traveling with two babies, girl, get on this plane. We got you. It doesn't matter. You got too many bags, get on this plane. We got you. Right? That's the nuance that humans are great at, that we want to have our agents be able to have more time for.

Devin Liddell: You might recall in our episode with Anthony Paul that Amtrak isn't planning to replace their train conductors with an AI version anytime soon, if ever. Bernadette's assertion is similar here. In air travel, AI will free up employees to assist passengers in ways that make them feel seen. AI will essentially give human employees more time to be human. This synergy between humans and AI goes beyond customer-facing roles. It even applies to behind-the-scenes ecosystems that are at the very heart of air travel operations.

Bernadette Berger: Now, I've thrown bags on the ramp, multiple, multiple shifts, and especially in Seattle, it's cold, it's rainy. You're driving a little tractor, and it's a hard, hard job in a very time-compressed situation, especially when you're talking about transfer bags, because you need to get bags from one tail, one airplane, drive them to another at the right time and get them on the next plane.

So we've been applying AI and automation throughout our baggage operations in Seattle to automate the connection between I know where Devin, the ramp agent is, I know where the planes are, and I know where the bags are. And I can pool this work together, like think about UberPool, right? And say, "Because of where he is, he's going to pick up and drop off bags throughout this very optimized route." He doesn't have to think about, "Where's Gate C17? And should I drive on this way? Well, what if a plane pushes back? Oh, well, they're having some construction over here." All of that is defined based on the rules by the AI algorithm, and the digital twin has been simulating the most optimized routes.

Now, when you get to the plane, humans are still pretty good at picking up bags and setting down bags, especially of different sizes. Robots will get there. I haven't seen it quite yet. But what robots are great at is being a autonomous vehicle and just saying, "These are the very defined roads and the very defined reasons why I'm not allowed to drive during these certain situations. I'm just going to take these bags over to the piers or over to the belt. I'm going to take these bags tail to tail." So now the humans are not out in the rain as much. They're there to be able to focus on, "Oh my gosh, this tag fell off. Where's this bag supposed to go? Oh, no, this bag is leaking." We move a lot of fish, like frozen fish and crabs. "These boxes of fish are leaking. What are we going to do?" Right? It's that problem solving that humans are good at. And then we can let the robots, the autonomous vehicles, and the AI handle the things that are rule-based and repetitive.

Devin Liddell: So to make sure I understand that correctly and to riff on the humans are better, the machines are better framework that we talked about earlier, that's a scenario in which, for example, there are autonomous vehicles driving in an autonomous way, based on rules related to the airfield, which is super important. But there are also humans in the mix who are doing what humans do really well. But there is sort of this blended sense of superpowers, like the machines have their superpowers, the humans have their superpowers, together though they have even more superpowers, right?

Bernadette Berger: Yes.

Devin Liddell: That's kind of the scenario you're bringing up, right? That is a blended approach to that.

Bernadette Berger: 100%.

Devin Liddell: All right, so time for speed round. What's your take on the most overhyped technology?

Bernadette Berger: Anything that is a off-the-shelf, out-of-the-box AI model. This is where we started with computer vision, and I'm a big fan of smaller, more highly trained models for very specific tasks.

Devin Liddell: What's your take on the most underhyped technology?

Bernadette Berger: A simple animation.

Devin Liddell: Oh, interesting.

Bernadette Berger: Do not give me all this text, I will not read it. Do not give me this long announcement, I will not hear it. You want me to put the bag on to the machine? Simple animation, I will do it. You want me to put the bag in the bin? Simple animation, I will do it.

Devin Liddell: Visual learners rejoice.

Bernadette Berger: Mm-hmm.

Devin Liddell: I love it. Okay, what book or show has influenced how you think about your role or think about your work as an innovator?

There is sort of this blended sense of superpowers, like the machines have their superpowers, the humans have their superpowers, together though they have even more superpowers, right?

Bernadette Berger:
I always say the best business book I ever read was Happiest Toddler on the Block. And man, every week comes right back, "Hey, I hear you. You are frustrated and you have not been heard, and I'm repeating back to you what you are telling me enough times until you feel heard." And then I'm going to say, "And we're not going to keep doing it that way. We're going to try something else. So what would need to be true in order for us to make a change?"

There's so many times where it's not just about having a great idea, it's about having the skills to build those relationships, to really see and feel the pain that employees are going through when they're trying to do their job or that guests are going through when they're trying to navigate the airport with grandma and grandpa, right? And when you see and feel that pain and you reflect that pain, then you can start talking about what might be possible to create change.

Devin Liddell: What I imagine, there's also a bit in there about framing or reframing choices and trade-offs in there, which is how you negotiate with toddlers as well, right?

Bernadette Berger: Yes, absolutely.

Devin Liddell: Awesome. All right, last one. What's an innovation in another industry, so something that's happening outside of commercial air travel, that has inspired you to think about your work in a different way?

Bernadette Berger: Yeah, man, shout out to Sephora. Sephora is really firing on all cylinders, from the app experience and the incredible amount of personalization to making it just fun to see what's new and different and learn, to their loyalty and getting you involved in their point system, to the in-store experience where I can try things myself. They have, I think, done such a good job of connecting the dots between a digital and online highly personalized experience and an in-store in-person experience that is infused with so much care and non-judgment, and it's aspirational and accessible. It's premium and there's people there from all walks of life trying to get a lip gloss. So I think Sephora is doing some amazing things that travel and aviation can learn a lot from.

Devin Liddell: I love it. Bernadette, thank you so much for being here today. It's been a lovely conversation and it's so great to see you again.

That's it for today. Thank you for listening to Design This Day, a podcast by Teague. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss the next episode. We have some really exciting guests coming up, I can't wait to share more with you next time. And if you have a complex problem that needs solving, we'd love to hear from you. Visit us at teague.com or send us an email at hello@teague.com.