Designing Flight Experience
As an airline company, how would you enhance the flight experience of your customers? Remember, the airline industry is generally risk averse and require a lot of capital to run. I attended a breakfast conference where Hudson Smales (Air New Zealand) and Shailesh Manga (Optimal Usability) talked about the process they went thru to deliver a better experience at Air New Zealand.
In early 2007, the CEO of Air New Zealand decided to rethink their longhaul in-flight experience. Their timeline: end of 2010 – delivery of their new Boeing 777-300ER. They recruited IDEO to better understand their customers and how they fly (behaviours, attitude and goals). One thing they did, among others, was to fly themselves on Air New Zealand and on competitors. They came up with 5 different types of customers; personas. They used The Simpsons to personify them. The first 3 are anti-socials and the last 2 are socials.
- Mr Burns who knows exactly what he wants and knows what he is entitled. Frequent flyers usually fall under this type. It’s the territorial type.
- Lisa who just want to get wrapped up in the in-flight entertainment.
- Mo (bartender) is simply disengaged and just wants to arrive.
- Marge who wants to talk to everybody and love the glamour of flying
- Bart who just love to talk without the glamour of flying
During the whole process, they kept in mind these 5 customer core values:
- More control over the journey experience.
- Variety in product and service experience.
- Free from emotional and physical trap of seat.
- More New Zealandness.
- Respectful but genuine service.
With the 5 personas and these core values, Air NZ decided to invite 4 New Zealand design companies to brainstorm seat designs: what was called Seat bootcamp. On one day, all 4 were asked to present their ideas, all of them were discussing in the same hangar in Auckland. They reviewed these 19 designs and finally chose 5 of them that would be prototyped (wood, styrofoam, etc) At that stage, Optimal Usability was involved to carry on Usability sessions with these 5 concepts, they decided to simulate 1 hour flight with actors by asking them to act as their given personas (the Simpsons).
Afterward, they took ideas from 3 concepts to create a new one that was tested with real customers and for a longer simulated flight (2 hours). Interestingly, in both cases, they simulated all flight phases (take off, cruising, landing, etc) but they also served meals and simulated in-flight noises. They finally come up with the Skycouch that you would see in the following video. There is also so shots of seat concepts.
Inside the aircraft, there will still be standard economy seats, only few rows will be transformed into Skycouch seats.
With these Boeing, Air NZ wants to go away from Selling seats and become a company who Sells experience. They still have a nice challenge: how to sell these new seats to the appropriate customers. Part of the challenge will be on their website and how they present this new experience to customers that would be interested in.
References: Air New Zealand – Future Taking Flight _________
