The Challenge
London Stansted was embarking on its most significant investment since it was first designed in 1991. The plans for expansion needed to do more than add capacity, it had to enhance how passengers move, feel and experience the airport.
Designing an experience-led expansion
Before finalising the infrastructural design for the expanded terminal, Manchester Airport Group (MAG) and Stansted Airport approached Engine to develop an Experience Masterplan to ensure that an enhanced end-to-end passenger experience was fully integrated into the architectural design.
With limited time to impact the design, we worked within the project’s constraints while challenging how experience could drive the next phase of architectural design.
Eight-week sprints to develop an enhanced passenger experience
With eight weeks to go before the design submission, Engine was tasked with conducting a series of CX design sprints to evaluate the current experience, develop a clear vision, and set of CX concepts for enhancing the passenger experience.
Working closely with a small group of senior stakeholders, we ensured every recommendation was grounded in reality and able to work across space, operations and commercial priorities. The sprints helped highlight where the current challenges and opportunities lay, allowing the new design to directly address them.
A vision focused on a return to simplicity
Foster’s original design was built on simplicity and coherence. A space free from unnecessary elements, where passengers’ views were uninterrupted as they travelled through. Over time, as operations expanded to handle increased passenger numbers, the simplicity had been eroded.
The passenger experience vision aimed to bring back that simplicity of travel across the whole journey, not just within the building, delivered through information, operations and the products and services that support them.
Delivering a zonal CX audit against the guest vision
Once the vision was set, we translated it into practice by breaking the experience into zones and assessing each one against the five aspects of simplicity. Using existing customer feedback and data, alongside new on-the-ground interviews and observations, we built a clear picture of opportunities and challenges across place, operations, people, information and processes.
Developing an Experience Masterplan to guide detailed design and investment
The opportunities identified across zones informed a series of CX uplift concepts, each addressing specific challenges while delivering on the overarching vision of travel made simple.
We created a zonal overlay showing how spaces could be reconfigured to support the target customer experience, along with CX concepts for enhancements across digital, people and information systems.
All of this came together in an Experience Masterplan – a single source or truth outlining the customer experience vision, design and zonal requirements. It provided a clear reference for internal teams and external partners, aligning everyone around what the future experience should feel like, and the role they play in delivering it.
