Design Research & Product Strategy
A user-centric research project for Thales, the global aerospace and defense leader behind many airlines' seat-back screens, reimagining how passengers discover and enjoy in-flight entertainment.
Thales supplies the in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems behind many airlines' seat-back screens. The brief was open-ended: take a user-centric lens to the IFE experience and find where it could be better. We focused on content personalization and organization, the differing needs of passenger demographics, and the real opportunities to deepen engagement on a flight.
We mapped the evolution of IFE and the emerging trends (hyper-personalization, bring-your-own-device, accessibility, seat-integrated tech) to understand where the industry was heading and where the gaps were.
We interviewed passengers across different travel profiles, then used thematic and correlation analysis to turn their stories into empathy maps and personas that revealed distinct, often conflicting needs.
Flies with his family and uses IFE to keep his kids entertained on long flights. Wants better family-friendly options and games they can play together.
A business traveler who browses for two or three minutes, then switches to her laptop. Wants productivity tools, news, and live updates over generic entertainment.
Enjoys films and documentaries but finds the text too small and the navigation confusing, spending up to 15 minutes just trying to find something.
A one-size-fits-all content wall leaves every passenger digging for something relevant, and most give up.
Passengers increasingly default to their own phones and laptops, so IFE has to earn attention back.
Small text and confusing controls make the system genuinely hard to use, especially for older travelers.
Across every demographic, finding the right content fast was the single most common frustration.
We translated the research into a set of strategic recommendations and a roadmap of themes for Thales to explore, prioritized around the needs that surfaced most strongly.
Recommend content by mood, flight duration, and passenger type instead of a static, generic catalog.
Redesign navigation and readability so every demographic can find content in seconds, not minutes.
Add games and shared activities to lift engagement, especially for families and younger flyers.
Meet passengers where they already are by connecting their own devices to the IFE experience.
We took a broad, ambiguous enterprise prompt and turned it into an evidence-based product direction, complete with personas, prioritized findings, and a phased roadmap we presented back to Thales. It is the research and strategy foundation that good product decisions are built on, and the kind of thinking I bring before a single screen gets designed.