Boeing, through Teague · 2013–2014

Research to requirements to the first supplier keynote at ACE.

In 2013 Teague put me on a question the 777X program had not answered: what the cabin should do for passengers whose expectations were being set outside aviation entirely. I spent weeks in cabins watching how people actually fly, turned it into a thesis, and then into requirements the program could build against. In March 2014 I delivered the keynote at Boeing's ACE event, the first supplier keynote in its history.

ACE2, Boeing, March 2014.

Sept 2013

spec-level imperatives delivered to 777X program leadership

20+ Rooms

one research body, four months, inside the program

March 2014

first supplier keynote in the history of Boeing's ACE event

777X leadership asked what passengers would expect years after delivery.

February 2013. The customer was 777X program leadership. The question was not "what should the cabin look like," it was what passengers would expect from an airplane delivered years later, by which point their expectations would have been set by everything that was not an airplane. Nobody could research that question directly. The airplane did not exist yet, and neither did the expectations it would be judged against.

Research brief excerpt: Research Program Roadmap, February 2013.

Every traveling Teague employee became a field researcher.

Weeks in cabins. International long-hauls plus multi-segment domestic runs. Every traveling Teague employee became a field researcher for the duration, which is how a small studio gets a sample that size.

The Teague Traveler fieldbook, 2013. The prompts every traveling employee carried.

Longhaul field notes, 2013. Timestamped observations, one row per event.

Stowing needs, synthesized from the observation set. 2013.

Passengers stopped grading airplanes against other airplanes.

"Magic of Flight vs Smart World." Aviation was still selling the magic of flight. Passengers had stopped grading it against other airplanes and started grading it against everything else in their lives. The white paper's core premise was to skate to where the puck is going.

The gap the program had to close.

The opportunity space, mapped from people to things and pull to push.

The findings became spec-level requirements, the step most research skips.

This is the step most research never takes. The findings became spec-level requirements, each marked as imperative or recommended: wireless capacity for three to four devices per passenger, HD streaming, consumer electronics disembedded from the airplane for weight and obsolescence, seat-presence sensors, RFID passenger recognition, smart-bag tags in cargo, instrumented cabins. Delivered to 777X program leadership in September 2013.

TEFX imperatives model for 777X.

One requirement sheet. Each carries an (Imperative) or (Recommendation) marker, which is what made it buildable.

The full set, September 2013. Six requirement sheets.

Each imperative went to a program, which is what makes a thesis a plan.

A 2x2 that assigned each imperative to a program. Existing capability went to 777X. Emerging capability went to Excelsior. Without that step a thesis is a point of view. With it, it is a plan someone owns.

Imperatives and recommendations, allocated across Excelsior, Nexus and 777X.

Evolution modeling. Technology on one axis, behavior on the other.

Findings do not travel on their own. Over twenty rooms in four months.

One research body, over twenty rooms, four months. Among them: Teague brown bag, Aviation Quarterly, the Boeing stakeholder report-out, Product Studio, Boeing Marketing, 777X SAM and Global Tech, a Boeing VIP tour, Payloads, Systems, Cabin Systems. Findings do not travel on their own. Somebody has to carry them into every room that has to act on them.

I keynoted Boeing's ACE event, the first supplier to do it.

In March 2014 I delivered the keynote at Boeing's ACE event, the first time a supplier had done so.

The room at ACE2, March 19, 2014.

I kept building on the imperatives after delivery.

I kept building on the imperatives after delivery: full-cabin demonstrators at one-to-one scale, working technology where it existed and Wizard-of-Oz where it did not. The work also continued without me, on the 777X and past it.

B/E Aerospace connectivity demonstrator in a 777X cabin mock-up, 2015.

The imperatives outlived the engagement that produced them.

I ran the in-cabin research, wrote the thesis, turned it into the imperatives delivered to 777X program leadership, and carried it through the roadshow and the keynote.

Event photography: Boeing. Demonstrator photograph: mine.