Project overview

Aircraft Seat: Group Research

Market research: the problem, goal and focus of the design research, aircraft seating market trends, the three pillars of sustainability, market innovations in sustainability and the design scope of long-haul wide-body seats.
Stakeholders: influence and interest in aircraft seat design, selling points to each, why stakeholders are more sustainably inclined, and opportunities.
User experience: why passenger experience drives loyalty, an experience map of a flight, key comfort factors, in-seat entertainment and passenger perceptions of sustainability.
Material waste: analysing waste and inefficiency in the seat’s use phase, the environmental impact of cleaning and maintenance, cost over the seat’s life, and routine cleaning at turnaround.
Manufacturing and end of life: causes of slow seat production, sustainable manufacturing methods, key factors affecting recycling and real-world solutions.
Market benchmarks: the Safran Z400, DOY Ultra Slim Low Carbon Seat and McLaren Racing Seat, with features, pain points and insights.
Teardown of an economy seat, mapping each disassembly step, fastener types and pain points such as tight-fit frames, unexpected pins and contaminant accumulation.
Eco Audit of DOY’s Ultra-Slim seat: assumptions and limitations, how recyclability can reduce embodied energy, and comparing embodied energy with the teardown design.
Doy seat materials: material weight distribution, embodied energy per kilogram, end-of-life potential and an aluminium circularity flow chart.
How Might We page: translating insights from each research page into How Might We questions to guide design research.
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