An immersive in-flight entertainment system designed to reduce travel anxiety and transform flight time into an engaging experience.
Sky View is a conceptual project to design an innovative In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) system using Virtual Reality. Our team was challenged to explore how immersive technology could enhance the passenger experience on long-haul flights, moving beyond traditional, passive screen entertainment to address key passenger and flight-based issues.
The core challenge was to address common passenger pain points that standard IFE systems fail to solve. Long flights often lead to boredom, disengagement, and significant travel anxiety for many. Traditional media can be passive and lack depth, especially for tech-savvy travelers.
“Passengers miss the world below.”
Furthermore, factors like cloud cover, night flights, or a poor seating position mean passengers often feel completely disconnected from the journey itself. Our goal was to transform this passive travel time into an active, engaging, and relaxing experience, creating a solution that was more than just a simple media player.
Our initial research focused on academic papers to validate our core assumptions. Studies by Chirico et al. (2021) revealed that VR interventions, particularly those with nature-based environments, can significantly reduce anxiety in confined spaces. This was supported by research from Syahrul Gafur et al. (2023), which found that distraction is a primary method to reduce flight anxiety, making VR a prime candidate for a solution.
Based on these findings, we developed two key personas to guide our design:
Steve, 32: A travel blogger and photographer who flies frequently on long-haul routes. His main pain point is the monotony of long flights and missing out on sightseeing opportunities due to tight schedules. He needs an experience that is immersive and engaging but still intuitive and easy to navigate.
Emma, 25: A marketing manager who regularly uses meditation apps like Headspace but struggles with flight anxiety and poor sleep on planes. She is not very tech-savvy and prefers simple, guided relaxation experiences to block out the inconsistent cabin noise and turbulence.
To address the challenges faced by Steve and Emma, we decided to design a VR experience for the Meta Quest 3, chosen for its wireless, standalone design and advanced mixed-reality capabilities, making it ideal for a confined in-flight environment.
From a passenger perspective, the app would offer a variety of options, from immersive virtual tours and guided meditations to standard entertainment like movies and games, all within a calming and intuitive 3D environment.
I created detailed storyboards to illustrate how our personas would interact with the system. Steve's storyboard focused on his desire for entertainment and exploration, showing him Browse the VR interface, selecting a virtual tour of his destination city, and feeling as if he'd been teleported there. Emma’s storyboard centered on her need for relaxation, showing her using a guided sleep meditation with calming 360° visuals to fall into a restful state and make the flight less stressful.
Our first sketches helped establish the structural foundation for the interface, exploring different screen layouts and the placement of key features. We created rough drawings of the main menu, notification system, and the "virtual window" concept.
During early conceptual testing, a key piece of feedback emerged: users wanted to feel aware of their flight's progress without breaking the immersion. This led us to refine the design to include a persistent but unobtrusive flight information panel that would be visible across all screens, a feature that became central to the final high-fidelity design.
I iterated on the designs after feedback, creating high-fidelity screens that defined the project's visual identity. The final design features a calming color palette of purples and blues and uses the SF Pro Display font for its high legibility on digital interfaces. Key screens were designed to be intuitive and informative, including the main "Welcome Aboard" menu, a globe view of the travel route, detailed landmark information for virtual tours, and a visual interface for meditation.
We conducted in-person user testing with 5 participants in a semi-controlled environment to replicate the flight experience. Using a "think aloud" protocol, we gathered qualitative feedback on a prototype.
In general, Sky View was extremely well-received. Participants praised the ability to see a pilot's POV without a window seat and the convenience of having persistent flight information. The immersive environments were described as a significant upgrade over traditional IFE screens.
For me, this project highlighted the critical need to balance innovative features with real-world user comfort and technological feasibility. A feature can be brilliant in isolation, but its context of use is paramount. It also reinforced the value of team collaboration and defining processes from the outset, which was a critical turning point that allowed us to design much more effectively.
Experience the journey from the pilot's perspective.
Explore your destination city before you even land.
Relax with calming visuals and soundscapes.
