The brief for this sponsored project was to develop a packaging concept for anything we could imagine (a current or future product or service, real or fictional).

I chose to redesign a boarding pass, considering (mostly) current technologies that may be more widespread in 5-10 years. I see a boarding pass issued for air travel as a package for: identity, information, and access.

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I elected to ignore the move to an immaterial (digital or bound to a biometric signature) form of access document. Instead, I focused on how technology may enable a temporal and disposable object to become smarter and more secure.

E-paper would allow a paper document to redraw its content (its display) with a small charge according to what is relevant at different stages of it's life.

A piece of paper becomes a display, but the qualities of paper remain: textured, foldable, ink absorbing, light-reflecting.

At different points in the air travel journey, the boarding pass re-draws to reveal what's important in that moment and to provide actionable information.

After the journey, the process of decay begins, hiding information that may be needed for later retrieval under a barcode rather than leaving it exposed.

My presentation was focused on concept justification as opposed to every specific detail of the execution.

If this were a real project instead of a conceptual student project, a major part of the effort would be aligning the interests of all the parties involved in an air travel experience.

A look at boarding passes today reveals a variety of formats and a lot of cryptic information.

Thanks to the timing of the project, I had a chance to be on 10 flights over the end-of-year holiday break of 2008.

During each experience in an airport and on-air I was able to observe behavioral patterns (in travelers and airport workers) and gain inspiration: from differing formats, regional customs, collecting lost boarding stubs, and experiencing a cancelled flight with a long lay-over.