Despite the seemingly inevitable trade-offs between heightened security and passenger checkpoint flow, TSA’s commitment to create a more user-centered, behavioral form of security is impressive. Their leadership in fusing technology, design thinking, and Agile-styled methodologies goes beyond the goal of creating a smoother and safer travel experience. It aims to build an alliance between security officers and the traveling public, and to put a human face on the often maligned agency.
Next to the Internal Revenue Service, TSA is the most disliked government agency in the United States. Annually, approximately 700 million people move through US airport security, and the safe and secure movement of these travelers is the responsibility of TSA employees. Their dilemma: the more upset travelers become with them, the harder it is to do their job. Not surprisingly, TSA is regularly in the media headlines, often not favorably. A review of global events underlines the challenge, and securing air travel today requires a complicated balancing act. From lightsabers to boxed muffins to live fish in bags of water, there is no end to the daily surprises that travelers bring to the airport. In the glare of publicity that TSA faces, difficult conversations cannot be ignored, but, as we will see, they can be welcomed and deftly facilitated.
To understand the challenge TSA faces, take a look at the photographs of the daily haul of confiscated items on the agency’s surprisingly entertaining Instagram account. It is mind-boggling: pistols, automatic weapons, ammunition, knives, and more. But most of us don’t carry weapons and are just trying to move quickly through security screening to get to our flight. Balancing speed and security is no easy feat. In a recent federal hearing on the agency, one congressman sympathized with TSA’s plight: “When we criticize you today about having long lines and taking too long to screen people, next week, if there is a [security] breach, we will haul you up here and lambaste you for not being more thorough.”
In the social sector, innovators are often tasked with trying to nudge people into making better choices. When the task is security, the ante is upped. Nudging is replaced by command and control—and then the going gets tough. Public dislike of the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t prevent it from collecting taxes, but the more the public resents the security process, the harder it is for TSA’s security officers to do their job, which is to uncover “hostile intent.” Creating a sense of calmness and collaboration, it turns out, is essential to improving safety; when everybody at the checkpoint is hostile, it is harder to detect dangerously hostile people amid the harmless frustrated masses.
So TSA has waged a fifteen-year, sometimes discouraging campaign to build a sense of shared purpose and to win travelers’ trust. Research suggests that compliance—especially around issues of privacy (such as body scanners) and security—is significantly enhanced when the party that needs to comply understands the reason behind the request, the benefits of compliance, and the cost and potential risks of noncompliance, and trusts the organization making the request.
In this chapter, we will look at how TSA has used technology and a combination of innovation approaches, like design thinking and Agile software development, to work toward this goal. TSA’s experience speaks to how an organization can be both technology-driven and user-centric at the same time and can engage in a dialogue that both illuminates and humanizes its purpose under trying circumstances.
Our story begins with the arrival of Kip Hawley, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who joined TSA one month after the 2001 terrorist attacks and was TSA’s senior administrator from 2005 to 2009. From the beginning, Kip aspired to find new ways to both serve and educate travelers, initiating a strategy of utilizing communication technologies to build better relationships that continues today.
TSA’s first foray into technology as a tool for communication was a blog to create a two-way forum between the agency and the public, with the first post coming from Kip himself. It emphasized the need for dialogue, stressed that learning was required on both sides, and promised that the discussion would be candid and impactful:
Two million travelers come in contact with the Transportation Security Administration every day. It is an intense experience all around—extremely personal in some senses but also impersonal at the same time.
There is no time to talk, to listen, to engage with each other. There isn’t much opportunity for our Security Officers to explain the “why” of what we ask you to do at the checkpoint, just the “what” needs to be done to clear security. The result is that the feedback and venting ends up circulating among passengers with no real opportunity for us to learn from you or vice versa…
Our ambition is to provide here a forum for a lively, open discussion of TSA issues…
Please be patient and good-humored as we get underway. The opportunity is that we will incorporate what we learn in this forum in our checkpoint process evolution. We will not only give you straight answers to your questions but we will challenge you with new ideas and involve you in upcoming changes.
One of my major goals of 2008 is to get TSA and passengers back on the same side, working together.
TSA then partnered with a variety of outside consultants to bring this commitment to life. One of their relationships was with IDEO, the pioneering innovation consultancy that we have met in earlier stories. In 2009, IDEO utilized a variety of traditional design tools in their work for TSA: observing and interviewing travelers, identifying key emotional characteristics of their journeys, creating traveler archetypes, and noting reactive behaviors in airports around the country.
Their research findings highlighted the importance of creating an ongoing alliance between passengers and security officers in order to reduce checkpoint stressors and render hostile intent more visible. Assuring a better passenger experience was an important contributor to this effort, they argued, and required not only a physical redesign of airport areas but also a shift in culture at every level in the agency, which required leadership and training. As the IDEO website noted:
The transformational culture change undertaken with IDEO moved the agency to embrace the notion that its employees, from frontline security officers to management and leadership, are crucial to improving both checkpoint security and the overall experience…After establishing the blueprint for the physical space, tone, and strategy of the checkpoint experience, IDEO created a training curriculum to empower TSOs [transportation security officers] and passengers to improve airport security. The curriculum works to create a sustainable solution for improving human interactions during a passenger’s journey through airport security…The new training includes an emphasis on understanding behaviors, people, and security measures, while instilling confidence among colleagues and passengers.
Implementation began in 2009, with a goal of training TSA’s entire workforce of fifty thousand employees at 450 domestic airports. Lynn Dean, a senior advisor to the TSA administrator and no stranger to daunting tasks in federal agency strategy and communications, laid out the challenge: “Our end goal is a checkpoint where everything is seamless and calm so that if there really is a bad person or someone with intent to do harm, they will stand out more.” Tired, harried, uninformed travelers inadvertently cause delays in security lines and sometimes cause scenes over innocuous errors, which diverts the attention of security screeners from those meaning to do harm or carrying contraband items. It all goes back to the problem of how to speed the process and reduce long wait lines while maintaining a high level of security.
Connecting with the Traveling Public
Given the necessity to serve and educate millions of travelers, TSA also began working on tools for communication via technology, including their website, in 2008. TSA partnered with Sapient, an organization with a human-centered approach, which aims to use technology in creative ways to solve complex problems. To further the idea of creating a calm checkpoint, Sapient’s mandate was to use innovative Web 2.0 technologies to better connect with the traveling public, to improve the public’s overall experience
both at the airport and before arrival at the airport, and to increase the public’s understanding of TSA’s people, mission, and policies.
To tackle this critical project, Sapient built a diverse team of creative strategists and technologists. On the TSA side, Lynn Dean, former senior advisor in the Office of the Administrator, and Neil Bonner, from information technology, joined as co-leaders. The team used Sapient’s own human-centered Agile-styled approach, which utilized what they called a FusionSM workshop. Exploring this process helps us to explore how design thinking works with other currently popular innovation methods, like Agile software development. The Agile model shares design thinking’s focus on the user’s needs, along with iterative building of prototypes through co-creation with customers.
Sapient’s FusionSM workshop model has been designed to change the experience of developing requirements and to help clients visualize a solution before it is built. In traditional software development approaches like the waterfall model, requirements are specified first, and then developers construct a solution, which is then tested for quality assurance. This sequential process leaves little room for iterative co-creation with users. Untested assumptions and hypotheses often cause misunderstanding about both the meaning and the usefulness of requirements. The FusionSM workshops are designed to bring together a cross-functional group to incorporate differing viewpoints and concepts into a shared vision. A key desired outcome of the FusionSM workshop is a clear roadmap, including business requirements and an action plan. Sapient’s process involves several phases, including (1) initiation; (2) preparation, research, and analysis; (3) the actual FusionSM workshop; and (4) a synthesis and deliverables summary.
The Initiate phase first identifies an opportunity. In the Preparation, Research, and Analysis phase, high-level objectives are crafted, desired participants are identified, and an agenda is set out. This phase equates to the initial groundwork in a design thinking project, where design thinkers grapple with and scope the problem, develop a design brief, and identify key stakeholders to involve. As is often the case, the crafting of the objectives may involve several iterations. The research stage is critical preparation for the upcoming workshop. The goal is to create a common language and framework to share with and align stakeholders. Tools such as journey maps and personas are used to form a baseline that facilitates workshop conversations. The emphasis throughout the process is on using clear language that everyone will understand. Visualizations, such as traveler personas and journey maps, help clarify written language and enable a discussion. Early on, visualizations can help to shift perspective to the target stakeholder’s point of view, and later they aid in getting all team members and stakeholders to envision a concept in the same way.
The Sapient FusionSM process.
The FusionSM workshop itself involves successive gatherings where groups meet together, break apart for focused sessions, and reconvene. Each time, ideas are captured, discussed, and iterated. The key is to be purposeful about who is in the room and to concentrate on directly relevant information that quickly moves the conversation forward. In the early stages, stakeholders come together to mine research data for insights from which design criteria are established. In later stages, the discussion revolves around designing solutions.
Workshop participants include subject matter experts, a workshop manager, a lead facilitator and breakout facilitators, and a note taker to keep everyone informed on updates and changes. The number of participants in a FusionSM workshop can vary, with the target between fifteen and twenty-four, though up to forty is possible.
Both the physical space and quality facilitation are important to allow participants to air different views, consider various aspects, and come to a shared understanding. Having a consultant as a trusted advisor, Sapient believes, facilitates the process: the job of the lead facilitator is to promote conversational flow while keeping the agenda on track. One key to Sapient’s approach is an overarching philosophy that everyone in the room is equal, has a voice, and will be heard. The idea is to nudge even senior management to leave their organizational hats at the door.
Visualization is indispensable. Meeting rooms have whiteboards all around. The intention is to ensure visibility so that the workshop’s framework is clear and understood by all. Participants cannot simply object to an idea. Instead, they are asked to build on it by addressing a challenge inherent in their objection. This requirement is similar to the improv comedy technique of “Yes, and…” in which one can never say no and instead has to build on the previous statement. This ensures an understanding of perspective and promotes expansion rather than critiquing of ideas.
The end result is a presentation of deliverables built with foundational pillars that include user needs and value as well as the differing perspectives of cross-functional teams and partners in the value chain. After a successful FusionSM workshop, teams are armed with a new project charter, business requirements document, roadmap, process flows, and action plans.
Exploring Travelers’ Experiences
The TSA team’s challenge was to explore travelers’ experiences and seek ways and means to communicate with, educate, and better serve travelers, and then to fundamentally revamp the TSA website on the basis of what they learned. In a process similar to the design thinking approaches we have been discussing, their journey started with an extensive review of the traveler’s journey from the points of view of different types of travelers as well as industry partners. This ethnography unlocked the door to passenger needs that previously were unknown or viewed as less significant.
The TSA team understood that keeping checkpoints calm meant paying close attention to what happens along the entire traveler journey, including what happens well before travelers reach a checkpoint. As Lynn explained:
A lot of problems with a checkpoint shutting down start with a person who meant absolutely no harm but just had a series of things that caused them to behave really badly. A lot of problems stem from “I didn’t know that before I got to the airport.” By providing travelers with information at the time it is first needed, we can save passengers money, we can save them stress, we can improve security.
The TSA team knew that even getting to the airport is often frustrating, because of traffic, parking challenges, and long lines at cafés and newsstands. The security checkpoint might be the last stop on a passenger’s already exasperating journey. So the team’s challenge was to equip people with information they needed, when they needed it, usually before arriving at the airport. A vacationer buying wine at a vineyard, for instance, or a traveler packing a carry-on with a jar of expensive face cream needed to know about restrictions on those items. At these vineyard or packing moments, passengers might search their smartphones for what can and cannot be brought on board.
TSA pulled together a cross-functional team consisting of security personnel, employees from the TSA customer contact center, and legal counsel. Lynn singled out the lawyers as key players:
Our legal department worked hand in hand with us. They were phenomenal. Whereas people are used to a lawyer saying no, our lawyers were saying, “We want to get to yes; we just want to make sure we do it within the confines of the law.”
The use of such cross-functional teams is a key element in the FusionSM process, according to Tom Sweatman, a Sapient management consultant with leadership, digital, and business strategy experience:
It starts to create a line of buy-in across the group on whatever the initiative or the project is. Each division or specific expertise area will have its blind spots and its priorities. So you get all those key stakeholders into the room for people to bring up those priorities and those needs as a larger group—that will increase the probability of success moving forward.
The idea was to ensure that issues were raised and dealt with rather than bypassed to crop up later, when they would be harder to deal with. The team was investing up front to create a solution that looked at more variables and thus was less likely to fal
l apart later. It allowed team members to move from siloed, narrow perspectives to a big-picture view that promoted innovative change.
TSA also reached out to other agencies for input. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was contacted for weather information feeds, and the Federal Aviation Administration was asked for information on airport conditions. At each team meeting, Lynn made it a point to ask if there was anyone missing or anyone else who should be in the room. No one alone had all the answers, she emphasized.
As we saw at Monash in chapter 5, the team combined the use of traditional quantitative data with ethnographic research. They examined secondary research and existing survey data, including surveys on air travel as well as TSA’s focus group research. They studied daily reports from checkpoints across the country. TSA web analytics and customer contact center reports were reviewed. Suggestions from the TSA Idea Factory, an online suggestion box for employees, were mined. Finally, because smartphones were becoming universal, research was conducted around how people would use mobile devices.
Primary research included interviewing a cross section of both internal and external stakeholders. Internally, TSA staff as well as frontline security officers, who do airport inspections, were interviewed. Externally, the team conducted fifteen interviews with a cross section of travelers. In addition, Sapient conducted a survey with two hundred business travelers, believing that focusing on this particular segment could yield dividends for other travelers.
Following the research, a journey map detailing traveler experiences was created. Moments on the journey map visually revealed that a lack of preparation and information created much traveler anxiety. The journey map continued to be validated and adjusted throughout the FusionSM workshop process.
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