Sky Bar
SkyBar is an independent project I have recently been developing. It is a redesign of the current airline beverage service system, a project that aims to reorganize, redefine, and update a service that hasn't changed in fifty plus years. The project combines a user-interface beverage selection design with a re-conceptualization of the physical beverage cart. Not only does the project consider the interaction between the flight crew and passender, it additionally considers how space can be used more effectively on an aircraft. Flying can and should become a more sophisticated process.
The Passenger
The average airplane passenger wants a hassle-free easy journey. No waiting for the aisle to free up to use the restroom, no drinks spilled on them by the overwhelmed attendant, no shouting over the loud engine to place a drink order. The current service system is accepted simply because it has become engrained in our travel system. But it doesn't have to be that way. In this proposal, "Sky Screens" would be integrated into the pre-existing screens upon which many airliners already provide movies and flight information. The interface would ideally be a touch screen that uses minimal words and maximum symbols for international travelers to easily understand. The passenger simply touches the screen to start when prompted to by an overhead announcment and illumination of the screen, chooses from the selection of drinks, hits the next arrow, and has his order confirmed by a universal check mark. Below are the three steps that a passenger would see on his or her screen once the flight crew has made a beverage service announcement.
The Flight Attendant
This is probably the third or fourth airplane trip of the day for the average flight attendant. She has been running from gate to gate since 5 a.m. this morning. To make her job easier, this interactive communication system between her assistants and her passengers makes beverage orders simple and effective. 10 minutes prior to beverage distribution, she makes a verbal announcment as well as activating a virtual announcment that appears on every passenger's screen. They have ten minutes to make a selection and communicate this back to her. This process is made easy through her own flight crew Sky Screen, which allows her to see orders as they come in, and organize this information into various sections. The squares on the screen correlate with compartments in the drink cart, which are labled by seat and row. If she only wants to fill the cart with one beverage type at a time, she only needs to select "view" and those passengers ordering that selection will illuminate on the screen (Figure A). Or, she can highlight each drink type to see the overall drink count (Figure B).
Fig. A
Fig. B
