Jul 22 - Jun 23
At the height of one of Lufthansa’s worst baggage crises, I designed the lost luggage reporting tool. The goal was to turn a stressful, broken process into a simple digital flow that gave passengers clarity, reassurance, and real-time updates, while reducing the burden on ground staff.
Full breakdown of the case study available on request
Context
In summer 2022, German airports were hit by severe staff shortages and logistical issues, leading to one of the biggest baggage loss crises in the history of Lufthansa: during this time, passengers were left frustrated and uninformed, while ground staff struggled to keep up without a scalable solution for managing claims. The Innovation Hub of Lufthansa was then asked by the bigger parent company (Deutsche Lufthansa AG) to think of a solution that would simplify claim baggage reporting, improve transparency of the process and reduce pressure on crisis teams.
Goal
Our objective was to reduce support costs and improve passenger satisfaction by supporting the delayed baggage claim process: we wanted to give travellers timely, transparent, and easily accessible updates on their claims. Also, the solution had to be scalable across all Lufthansa Group Airlines (SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Eurowings and Discover Airlines)
Impact
Team
Product discovery
I conducted field research directly in the airport environment to get as close to the problem as possible: this included observing passengers as they tried to navigate the baggage claim process, as well as shadowing ground staff dealing with overwhelmed systems and queues.
To complement these observations, I launched a 501-person passenger survey that gave us measurable insights into frustration points, expectations, and desired improvements.
Finally, I also facilitated stakeholder alignment sessions with crisis management teams, product managers, and operations staff. These conversations were critical to validate what we were hearing from passengers and to frame the business priorities around support costs and operational scalability.
These discovery efforts painted a clear picture: passengers needed clarity, reassurance, and transparency, while Lufthansa teams needed a tool that could streamline reporting, cut resolution time, and reduce escalations.
Mapping, workshopping
After the research, I started with user journey mapping, plotting every step a passenger takes when dealing with delayed baggage, from the moment they realize their bag is missing to the stressful process of trying to file a report. This exposed pain points like lack of real-time feedback, repetitive data entry, and unclear next steps.
Next, I ran assumption mapping and clustering workshops with relevant stakeholders: for the frameworks, I used Assumptions Canvas and Empathy Mapping, and we worked through what we thought we knew versus what was still uncertain. This workshop gave us alignment on risks and opportunities, and kept the team honest about blind spots.
Ideation
From there, we moved into early prototyping: low-fidelity sketches and clickable wireframes were tested quickly with passengers and ground staff, allowing us to validate ideas like guided claim steps, structured prompts for users, and transparent updates before moving into high-fidelity design.
Starting wide with journeys and assumptions, then narrowing into tangible prototypes made sure that the reporting flow was functional and empathetic, grounded in the real passenger behavior and operational needs I discovered during the product discovery.
Design System
One of my priority was making sure the solution could live beyond just this single crisis, so I turned the reporting flow into reusable components: things like claim step indicators, banners for status updates, and input modules that could be slotted into other journeys later on. This waa, the designers in the main Lufthansa group would get patterns they could use again and again across different service scenarios.
Mobile-first
The product discovery showed me that most people don’t report lost luggage sitting calmly at home on a desktop, but they do it while still in the airport, stressed and tired, and usually from their phone. That’s why we designed mobile-first. Forms were shortened and simplified, error messages showed up in the moment, and progress markers gave passengers confidence they were moving forward. Only after that did we adapt the flow for desktop.
Closing notes
Within the first four months after launch, the tool had already made a measurable difference: passenger complaints about lost baggage dropped significantly, and the system successfully processed more than 4,700 reports.
Customer satisfaction surveys showed a 52% positive response rate, which is not perfect, but an important step forward, with over half of users reporting a smoother and more transparent experience.
Just as importantly, the automated process took pressure off ground staff, speeding up resolution times and reducing the chaos caused by manual workflows.
This was one of the most intense projects I’ve worked on, carried out at the height of the 2022 travel disruption when every mistake had immediate consequences for real passengers and staff. The timelines were tight, and I often had to balance several research and design streams at once: from airport fieldwork to large-scale surveys to executive-level stakeholder reviews. Another layer of challenge was the language: the primary working language was German, so I had to push myself to run interviews, workshops, and design reviews in real time, often outside of my comfort zone.
