👉 “Flight attendants are stupid; they don’t understand the solutions we design for them!”
That was the myth I had to bust.
In the 1960s, flight attendants were deeply involved in cabin and service design. But as aviation commoditized, decisions became all about price and weight. The crew’s voice disappeared, and engineers started designing from requirements rather than real-life needs.
Yet aviation is a B2B2C industry. Passengers are the airlines’ customers, but flight attendants are the frontline agents who make the experience real. The distance between engineers, passengers and stakeholders like flight attendants? About 30,000 feet—and several layers of miscommunication.
After a decade of service design, I joined the industry wanting to close that gap. With TU Delft, I launched the Experience Lab—a Master’s thesis project where we built a full A320 interior and developed research tools to study how products and services actually worked in use.
The goal? Simple: put engineers and flight attendants in the same space—so crew could kick the developer’ ass when solutions didn’t work.
We started small: inviting cabin crew, running onboard role plays, testing tools in simulated service conditions. Soon we discovered:
· Our designs met safety & abuse requirements but did not solve wicked onboard problems
· How passengers and flight attendants interact during flight journeys
· How onboard innovations ripple into critical ground processes
· How early prototypes improve with direct crew and passenger input
The Lab evolved into a Living Lab. Our research moved onboard, into catering kitchens, onto ramps. Researchers experienced cramped galleys firsthand, felt turnaround time pressure, understood peak service workload in economy. The learnings were transformative.
💡 The outcome:
• Engineers began every project asking: “What do flight attendants need?”
• Assumptions were challenged early, saving costs later
• Uncovering system-level insights airlines themselves missed
• Co-created new service concepts with catering and airline stakeholders
• Re-imagined onboard products, systems, and services based on real needs applying new emerging technologies
• Most importantly: we embedded user-centered thinking into innovation DNA
Myth busted. User experience research became the driver of onboard innovation—not an afterthought
Next up: Experience Innovation