Aircraft interior for 777X: An adaptive entry interior that optimize the business class passenger and cabin crew inflight experience

Aircraft interior for 777X: An adaptive entry interior that optimize the business class passenger and cabin crew inflight experience

Chen, T.Y.

Vink, P. (mentor)
Hoftijzer, J.W. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Design Engineering

Integrated Product Design

2015-11-11

With the booming of air-travel, the demand for quality in travel is rising. This master thesis aims to elevate the inflight experience for the upcoming aircraft model 777X. The goal is to reshape the aircraft interior in the door 2 entry area by providing a better space comfort, ergonomics and user experience to the target group – the passenger and the cabin crew in the business class. Several studies have shown that associating flight journey with comfort helps an airline to gain passenger’s loyalty. However, while services outside of the plane are catching up to the sudden rise of the mobile technology, the cabin interior design reacts slowly and falls into a competition of maximizing the number of seats. The door 2 area plays an important role especially on a twin aisle aircraft. It is the boarding entry and disembarking exit of the aircraft where more than half of the passengers will pass. Yet, the design language of the door 2 facilities is not consistent to the seating area and many still look stale and strictly functional on most of the aircrafts. The first step was to gain insights of the aviation industry and the 777X. In the internal and external study sector, many literature and company reports have been studied. It discusses the competitiveness of 777X and the transition around the cabin interior. Also the holistic environment of aviation has been viewed, in which the “Golden Age” flying experience and the current air travel status quo have been compared. Finally it finishes with an overview of relevant trends. Two explorative user research were conducted. A questionnaire with 127 passenger feedbacks has summarized their inflight activities and revealed their comfort experiences that are associated with the service touch points. An in-depth look into the cabin crew routine and working environment was executed by several interviews and a fly along documentation. This part of the user research has brought a better understanding of the cabin crew’s working process and the problems that need to be tackled. The collected insights from the previous research have been analyzed and put into a SWOT model. After a selection process, it has led to the design direction: an adaptive space with integrated smart system. The design vision has shifted the perspective into delivering comfort and convenience to the cabin crew that also generates added value for the passengers. Many students and company designers have participated in the brainstorming session. During the creative facilitation, the attendees were asked to create an ideal scenery of a dreamlike travel experience and to give the possible combination of the features that correspond to those imaginations. The above guidelines have resulted in FiO. FiO is a concept that represents the whole interior and the system design of the future cabin. It involves a combination of an adaptive interior space that is able to transform into different functions for different type of users, such as self catering bar stand, fold-out stool and a media projection wall. The design does not only regain the space of comfort, align its appearance with the business class area, the innovative cabin crew control system also provides digital assistance to help the cabin crew to deliver a better service. A virtual reality prototype was used to evaluate the design outcome. Eight target users have reviewed FiO and gave an overall positive reaction. These participants have shown their engagement when immersed in the new design and have all agreed on the potential that VR prototypes bring. Finally, the design was reviewed internally with the company designers and engineers, and got an approval of its value. At the end of this project, several design ideas within FiO have been patented by B/E Aerospace.

aircraft
interior
777X
cabin crew
passenger

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4b2fdfbf-c45c-4035-af90-1907a82258d2

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Chen, T.Y.