Citation Hemisphere
Introduction
In Spring 2016, the aviation aircraft company Cessna collaborated with RISD, and tasked Interior Architecture and Industrial Design students develop a design concept for their new private jet Citation Hemisphere.
My Role
This was a group project with 3 other designers George Duan, Elsa Carlson and Hobin Song. My role included research, user experience design and creating the physical prototype.
The Challenge
The challenge was to design a great experience for a user in a very small space, while delivering enough privacy and convenience.
The Process
We started with developing a user - Dan Passe an international DJ whose extreme travel patterns during his world tours helped us develop a background of research of travel schedules, blogs, interviews and more to further understand “jet culture”. From our studies, users that own or fly private jets (businessmen, celebrities, entrepreneurs) are limited to the time they have in sky at a chance of privacy - comparatively to their normal daily lives. In order to capture the sense of privacy in a larger spectrum, we used home as a device to model from.
The Solution
After research and experimentation, the Crib was designed. The Crib is an independent pod shaped to match the exterior contours of the plane, which allows users through a film curtain to have the choice to be public, semi-public, or private. Fly feeling safe in your own private Crib.
The Presentation
The design was presented to a group of engineers, interior and industrial designers from Cessna. We used the graphical boards, a scale model, a 1:1 prototype and a VR experience to present the concept.
The Outcome
Cessna Hemisphere was released a few years later and it has incorporated some of the concepts we came up with, such as the division of the interior into a private and public sections. You can read more about the final design here.