The Development of Dedicated Prototype Tools for the Design of VIP aircraft interiors

The Development of Dedicated Prototype Tools for the Design of VIP aircraft interiors

Steenbeek, J.

Smulders, F.E.H.M. (mentor)
Verlinden, J.C. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2010-12-17

Being a young company in the VIP conversions market, Fokker Services got hit hard by the Economic crisis in 2008. Competitors with more outfitting experience are able to keep the cost lower and the few clients that are currently looking for new VIP aircraft tend to select these cheaper options. Future clients will have to be convinced otherwise to desire FS to build their aircraft. The strength of Fokker Services, delivering high quality and well-engineered products, is their pitfall at the same time. Too much of a quantitative engineering approach is used for the qualitative concept design phase of the design process. This follows through in current communication with clients, but also in the design artefacts that are used to support this communication. Two important factors are at the base of the miscommunications between client and company in design meetings: 1. Fokker Services is using an engineering oriented design process, which underestimates the value of client-company interaction. 2. The presently used design artefacts used in meetings inadequately support sufficient understanding by the client for making proper design decisions. Instead of an engineering approach, FS should use a social design approach to the concept design process. This approach is attuned better to the clients’ world of thought and embodies the value of understandable communication. In previous projects clients tended to change their mind too late in the design process. To counter this, it is important to allow clients to change their mind in the concept design phase of the design process. They have to be confident about their decisions so that they will not change their mind later on in the process. Furthermore this thesis proposes a set of new and adapted design artefacts, which aim to create a better understanding of conceptual interior designs by the client. The focus has been put on the design and user test of an improved interior planner: the layout design kit. It is recommended that Fokker Services develops this tool further by making use of an external design company. Only time will tell if the implementation of the new design artefacts will really aid clients in making confident decisions about to-be-build aircraft interiors, but it certainly looks promising.

design methodology
design artefacts

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:85c25f82-c018-4d44-9c98-ffc95e8d5eef

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2010 Steenbeek, J.