Our study on the Future of the airport for Schiphol Airport led to a new project to use this as a starting point to rethink the gates and piers. At the moment of the project, the quality and comfort of waiting at the gates were below standard – compared to Schiphol’s competition. That is why Schiphol aimed to upgrade the piers and gates in the upcoming years and came to Out Of Office for inspiration and fuel in their ideation phase.
… Erase the word “wait” from the Airports vocabulary. This is an easy win, because, quite frankly, people don’t wait anymore; they work, consume or are entertained. Erase the word “wait” and suddenly the airport no longer needs to design lounges for waiting. The future traveller will seek to optimize every minute, and within the future airport it will come to feel like he gained—not lost—valuable time and experience …
– The New Terminal Bliss, a future vision by Out Of Office for Schiphol, February 2012
In short, Schiphol wanted to be inspired and fuelled with fresh innovative ideas to redesign their gates. Out Of Office focused – in collaboration with Schiphol’s Integrated Development & Concept Department – to develop and design ideas with a specific criteria and scope. In this project. We focused on moments in the passenger journey when seating, working and entertaining, but we also looked at aspects of relaxation and corporate responsibility.
Being a network-based company, Out Of Office main strength is that we are operating in a network of very creative and talented sources. So, for this project, we set up co-creation sessions with our global creative network for inspiration and ideas. We designed and facilitated workshop activities to explore how the future gate could look like or what ideas would resonate for future passengers and taking the trends as a backdrop.
The result was a story and visual repository of ideas and concepts for the future gates. We made sure that the ideas were both connected to the core values of Schiphol brand and strategy as well as the new behaviours and trends we envisioned in our future studies. All of this was personally delivered to Schiphol’s Integrated Development & Concept Department to support them to drive these ideas forwards within the company.
