For my Strategic Product Design (TU Delft) Masters’ thesis at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, I organized - in collaboration with KLM’s Innovation department - the Royal Dutch Airlines’ first product-testing flight where inflight innovations from Silicon Valley startups were tested during the actual flight. KLM X-Flights was a logical next step after I helped KLM with shaping KLM X-Gates, where you can find more about via Medium.
“How can we create co-design with cabin crew, passengers and startups in the airline industry, to facilitate test flights?”
Discover: Intro to KLM X-Flights
X-flights is a project from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, with the aim to facilitate test flights on regular flights in real-time, with real passengers. The objective of X-Flights is to facilitate both internal as external idea owners, and therefore make testing innovations, either process or product, during dedicated test flights easier and less bureaucratic. The aim of this thesis was to create a way of working for startups, cabin crew and passengers to test during flights and therefore add value to the passengers’ experience.
Discover: Design Methodologies
During the project several design methodologies were used. The double diamond model was used for the overall project structure and the design sprint was used multiple times on multiple locations. Next to that different (action) research was conducted during the project.
Define: Let the journey begin
After mapping out the project and finding the right methods to tackle the issue, it was time to travel. First to San Francisco and Silicon Valley to find the right startups, followed by a super short trip to Tokyo as a benchmark from the partner airline Air France.
Define: Scouting Startups
To find the best startups to work with, I arranged multiple meetings with startups in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley. After selection it was decided to test with 1 startup: Neuroon. A company that makes intelligent sleeping masks to prevent jet lags.
Define: Baseline reference — Air France FlyingLab
To create a baseline reference how testing is done currently at Air France - KLM, observative research has been done on a test flight from Paris to Tokyo. This was the starting point for the assessment criteria used for KLM X-Flights.
Develop: X-Flight Design Sprint
In order to co-create the best way of working together with the startups, cabin crew and passengers, all 3 actors (crew, passengers and startup) were invite to a collaborative generative session in San Francisco. This session was the kick-off for a one week sprint: meaning going through every phase of a design process in just 5 days. The phases going included analysis, ideation, prototyping, testing and evaluation. In this sprint the ‘testing’ was realized as the 2 X-Flights from SFO to AMS organized by me.
Deliver: A Visual Advice for KLM
The result from the design sprint and 2 X-Flights was measured with both qualitative (observations) and quantitative (surveys) research. In order to pass on the conclusions and recommendations to the person responsible for implementing X-Flights, a visual advice was created, clearly communicating the timeline, the ‘genius’ journey and user touch points.
Deliver: KLM’s first successful product testing flights — Done.
Reflecting back on the project it was one of the most fun and challenging design challenges I’ve worked on. This was the result of great team work and a lot of trust and experience from my mentors and supervisors at both KLM and TU Delft. I am very grateful they trusted me with this challenge and opportunity.
