Bologna Airport
iOS & Android Mobile App for a Major Airport in Central Italy
Duration
6 months
Made with
Tangible
Stakeholder
Aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi di Bologna S.p.A
Industry
Airport Operations
The Bologna Airport digital experience operates in a context where users make decisions under time pressure, uncertainty, and stress. In these conditions, usability issues are not minor inconveniences — they directly affect people’s ability to move, orient themselves, and act. The project focused on improving clarity and predictability across the airport’s digital touchpoints, rather than on visual refresh or feature expansion.
Bologna Airport
iOS & Android Mobile App for a Major Airport in Central Italy
Duration
6 months
Made with
Tangible
Stakeholder
Aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi di Bologna S.p.A
Industry
Airport Operations
The Bologna Airport digital experience operates in a context where users make decisions under time pressure, uncertainty, and stress. In these conditions, usability issues are not minor inconveniences — they directly affect people’s ability to move, orient themselves, and act. The project focused on improving clarity and predictability across the airport’s digital touchpoints, rather than on visual refresh or feature expansion.
Bologna Airport
iOS & Android Mobile App for a Major Airport in Central Italy
Duration
6 months
Made with
Tangible
Stakeholder
Aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi di Bologna S.p.A
Industry
Airport Operations
The Bologna Airport digital experience operates in a context where users make decisions under time pressure, uncertainty, and stress. In these conditions, usability issues are not minor inconveniences — they directly affect people’s ability to move, orient themselves, and act. The project focused on improving clarity and predictability across the airport’s digital touchpoints, rather than on visual refresh or feature expansion.
Context
Bologna Airport serves a heterogeneous audience, including first-time travelers, frequent flyers, families, and international users. Digital services support multiple moments of the journey, before, during, and after the airport experience. As services accumulated over time, the experience became fragmented. Interfaces worked locally, but users were often forced to interpret information, reconcile inconsistencies, and make decisions without clear guidance. The challenge was not missing functionality, but lack of a coherent experience across moments and touchpoints.
The real problem
The core issue was decision uncertainty.
Users were often unsure about what to do next, which information to trust, or which action had priority. From a system perspective, UX decisions were made at feature level, without a shared structure guiding behavior, hierarchy, and interaction patterns across the journey.
In a time-critical environment, this translated into friction exactly where clarity mattered most.
My Role
I worked as a Senior UI / UX Designer within a multidisciplinary team, collaborating with UX researchers, product stakeholders, and developers.
My responsibility was to translate research insights into clearer interaction models, define consistent interface behaviors, and reduce ambiguity across key moments of the airport journey, ensuring solutions were feasible within operational and technical constraints.
Context
Bologna Airport serves a heterogeneous audience, including first-time travelers, frequent flyers, families, and international users. Digital services support multiple moments of the journey, before, during, and after the airport experience. As services accumulated over time, the experience became fragmented. Interfaces worked locally, but users were often forced to interpret information, reconcile inconsistencies, and make decisions without clear guidance. The challenge was not missing functionality, but lack of a coherent experience across moments and touchpoints.
The real problem
The core issue was decision uncertainty.
Users were often unsure about what to do next, which information to trust, or which action had priority. From a system perspective, UX decisions were made at feature level, without a shared structure guiding behavior, hierarchy, and interaction patterns across the journey.
In a time-critical environment, this translated into friction exactly where clarity mattered most.
My Role
I worked as a Senior UI / UX Designer within a multidisciplinary team, collaborating with UX researchers, product stakeholders, and developers.
My responsibility was to translate research insights into clearer interaction models, define consistent interface behaviors, and reduce ambiguity across key moments of the airport journey, ensuring solutions were feasible within operational and technical constraints.
Context
Bologna Airport serves a heterogeneous audience, including first-time travelers, frequent flyers, families, and international users. Digital services support multiple moments of the journey, before, during, and after the airport experience. As services accumulated over time, the experience became fragmented. Interfaces worked locally, but users were often forced to interpret information, reconcile inconsistencies, and make decisions without clear guidance. The challenge was not missing functionality, but lack of a coherent experience across moments and touchpoints.
The real problem
The core issue was decision uncertainty.
Users were often unsure about what to do next, which information to trust, or which action had priority. From a system perspective, UX decisions were made at feature level, without a shared structure guiding behavior, hierarchy, and interaction patterns across the journey.
In a time-critical environment, this translated into friction exactly where clarity mattered most.
My Role
I worked as a Senior UI / UX Designer within a multidisciplinary team, collaborating with UX researchers, product stakeholders, and developers.
My responsibility was to translate research insights into clearer interaction models, define consistent interface behaviors, and reduce ambiguity across key moments of the airport journey, ensuring solutions were feasible within operational and technical constraints.
Designing for predictability under pressure
The work focused on reducing cognitive load rather than simplifying functionality. Information hierarchy was restructured to surface what mattered most at each moment, while interaction patterns were aligned to make system behavior predictable. Instead of optimizing individual screens, the design effort concentrated on defining consistent UX rules across flows, helping users form correct expectations and act with confidence, even under time pressure. The goal was not to guide users step by step, but to remove unnecessary interpretation.
What changed
The redesigned experience improved clarity across key touchpoints, reduced friction in decision-heavy moments, and made information easier to scan and act upon. UX decisions became more consistent across the product, enabling teams to iterate without reintroducing fragmentation. The system remained complex, but users were no longer forced to manage that complexity themselves.
Reflection
Good UX in time-critical environments is not about adding guidance.
It’s about removing doubt. When users trust what they see and understand what to do next, the system disappears into the background.
What changed
Design discussions became less about negotiation and more about decisions. Teams shared a common language to reason about interfaces, onboarding required less context transfer, and feature delivery relied less on ad-hoc alignment. The design system did not remove complexity, but it transformed it from a source of friction into a manageable, shared structure.
Reflection
A more intuitive, efficient, and visually coherent banking experience, reducing complexity while enhancing usability. The integration of design tokens and a structured design system enables long-term adaptability and seamless platform evolution.
E.
Currently available for product design roles
and system-driven projects on complex digital products.
If this way of thinking resonates, let’s discuss a product.
© Edoardo Sportelli - 2026. Living in Italy, in Fiastra, nestled in the Sibillini Mountains. Like Tuscany, but better. Policy Privacy and Data Protection. No reuse or redistribution without permission.
E.
Currently available for product design roles
and system-driven projects on complex digital products.
If this way of thinking resonates, let’s discuss a product.
© Edoardo Sportelli - 2026. Living in Italy, in Fiastra, nestled in the Sibillini Mountains. Like Tuscany, but better. Policy Privacy and Data Protection. No reuse or redistribution without permission.
Currently available for product design roles
and system-driven projects on complex digital products.
If this way of thinking resonates, let’s discuss a product.
© Edoardo Sportelli - 2024
Living in Italy, in Fiastra, nestled in the Sibillini Mountains. Like Tuscany, but better.
Policy Privacy and Data Protection.
No reuse or redistribution without permission.
E.