Based on the research and brainstorming for ideas for a wearable that is used in an aircraft cabin, a concept idea choice has been made. The chosen concept idea has been more detailed to become a full concept.
The first idea that has been excluded to become a more concrete concept is the device for pre- vention of spread of illnesses. Research on how the spread of illnesses in an aircraft cabin could be prevented showed that a wearable would not have an added value. Antibacterial textiles are still in development and not yet commercially available.
While they might be great to be used in hospi- tals, as for example for antibacterial bed linen, they are not well suited for the use in an aircraft cabin. For the assignment it is given that the air- line that is going to offer the product to their staff or their clients should have a positive busi- ness case. Offering antibacterial clothing to the staff and the passengers would probably not result in a positive business case, because pas- sengers are likely not to be reminded that there is a higher chance to get infected on an aircraft. Moreover, it does not seem to be challenging enough to design clothing made of antibac- terial fabrics and the body parts that are most prone to be affected by bacteria are the mucous membranes. In order to prevent bacteria from settling down, the mucous membranes must be protected.
This could be done by designing a face mask made of antibacterial textile, but a face mask would be daunting for other passengers, since they could think that the wearer of the mask is very sick. Such a mask could be offered to staff and passengers who are sick, but in general sick staff should not be allowed to work and persons who have an infectious illness should not be allo- wed to get on board. All in all the spread of ill-
nesses could be prevented by improving the ven- tilators of an aircraft and antibacterial materials may be used for the interior, but a wearable does not seem very promising to solve this problem. The next idea that has been dropped is the device for improving sleeping behavior on an aircraft. Despite that many people are strug- gling to sleep on an aircraft, this problem can- not be completely solved by a wearable. Most find the seats too uncomfortable and many also cannot sleep well because of the surrounding noise and the movements of the aircraft. While the problem with the noise could be eliminated by a wearable, the others cannot be eliminated by such a device.
Furthermore, music and bright light therapy could help the passengers to fall asleep but such devices are already on the market and additio- nally there already is the possibility to listen to calming music on the aircraft. Therefore desig- ning a device that improves the sleeping beha- vior on an aircraft would not be very valuable and not challenging enough for this assignment. Also the idea to design a wearable that helps people to overcome their nervousness about flying has been dropped.
Though this topic would have been challenging enough, it might not fit into the assignment description. The goal of this assignment has been set to design a wearable that can be offered to airlines in the form of a business-to-business market. The device might be more a product to be sold on the consumer market than from busi- ness-to-business since people who feel nervous about flying might like to invest once into such a product. This way they could also start the tre- atment already before the flight, which would be more effective for them. Additionally, in this phase of the project it is still unclear if there would be an added value to design a device
2.6 CHOICE OF CONCEPT IDEA
against nervousness about flying as a weara- ble. More research and a more concrete con- cept would be necessary to determine if such a device would be better as a wearable than, for instance, as an application for smartphones or as a part of the aircraft interior.
The final idea is a device to be used by the cabin crew. Such a device could have various functions of which some definitely would be very valuable to be integrated into a wearable other than into the interior or a smartphone application. There
is great potential to design some functionalities that do indeed improve the service and the effi- ciency of the work of the flight attendants. Such a product fits perfectly into a business-to-busi- ness market and it can also be combined with a smart cabin product line Zodiac Aerospace is currently working on. Thus, considering that a wearable for use for the cabin crew would be more successful on the market and does fit very well into the vision and plans of Zodiac Aerospace, it has been chosen to go on with this idea.