Designing the Skycouch: How Air New Zealand moved from selling seats to selling experiences
At the end of 2006, the Air New Zealand board challenged a small team to redesign the long-haul flying experience. Just over three years later, Air New Zealand unveiled the Skycouch, the world’s first lie-flat economy-class bed.
The story of those three years is one of world-class innovation, inventive design research and old fashioned hard work. Instrumental to the success of this project was; the research work that helped develop a comprehensive and compelling understanding of Air New Zealand’s long haul customers, and the iterative design and testing process that ensured that the new designs would satisfy and delight the end user.
Among the many challenges inherent in this project was the need to recreate the long haul flying experience, for testing purposes, without the availability of an aircraft.
Learn:
- The five key customer drivers that inspired the innovation
- How design bootcamps were used to generate seat concepts
- How the seat concepts were refined by simulating the long-haul flying experience
- Hard-won lessons you can apply when approaching your own design problems
This session will inspire anyone who cares about the customer experience at their organisation.
