Rosenverse
Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace

Thursday, October 27, 2022 • Enterprise Community
Share the love for this talk
Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace
Speakers: Teresa Swingler
Link:

Summary

Watch to learn about how Honeywell Aerospace’s design team helps customers create aircraft that are a pleasure to fly, affordable to maintain, and good for the planet. In this interactive session with Teresa Swingler, our community members learned how we use both traditional and modern UX/UI techniques to understand customers’ needs and translate them into experiences that are intuitive, safe, and sustainable.


Key Insights

  • •

    Honeywell Aerospace designs avionics and flight systems, not entire aircraft like Boeing or Airbus.

  • •

    Safety is non-negotiable in aerospace design, with many products needing certification before use.

  • •

    Urban air mobility aims to reduce road congestion by providing electric air taxi services profitable by 2028.

  • •

    Flight control design is inspired by video game interfaces to simplify operation for pilots without traditional aviation backgrounds.

  • •

    Pilot training for UAM aims to reduce qualification time from 1500 hours to two weeks by simplifying controls.

  • •

    Honeywell uses rapid, low-fidelity prototyping to test ideas quickly and cancel unviable products early.

  • •

    The pet travel smart kennel concept failed because of COVID-era travel restrictions and negative media.

  • •

    Future air traffic infrastructure will require new airways and waypoints akin to roads to manage UAM vehicle flow.

  • •

    Pilot feedback on gaming-style controls varies with experience; newer pilots have less bias and are more open.

  • •

    Balancing emotional design quality and concrete safety metrics presents unique challenges in aerospace UX.

Notable Quotes

"Design is at the heart of everything we do at Honeywell Aerospace."

"Safety first is a must; flying has to be clean, effective, and safe — not easy from conventional helicopters."

"Urban air mobility business is expected to be profitable by 2028, helping solve dense city congestion."

"We want it to take two weeks instead of two years for a skilled operator to pilot these new vehicles."

"We're borrowing from video game design: simplified layouts, spatial sound, and haptics to enhance user experience."

"We make life or death decisions with design much more often than typical software design."

"We encourage canceling programs very fast if research shows lack of need to avoid wasted effort."

"What if flying was as easy as driving a car? That was our main question designing user interfaces."

"Pilot onboarding includes extensive checklists that are only now being digitized from paper."

"There isn’t yet a good way to measure emotional quality of design, only accuracy, safety, and cost."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sahibzada Mayed
The Politics of Radical Research: A Manifesto
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Bria Alexander
Theme Two Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Doug Powell
DesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Jon Fukuda
Theme 3 Intro
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Joel Branch
Humanizing AI: Filling the Gaps with Multi-faceted Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Erika Flowers
AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Katie Hansen
Finding the unknown in the known: Harnessing meta-analysis and literature review
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Carol Massa
Designing Health: Integrating Service Design, Technology, and Strategy to Transform Patient and Clinician Experiences
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Elena Naids
The Power of Difficult Conversations: A Case Study on How We Introduced Design Ops in the Federal Government Space
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
B. Pagels-Minor
Breaking the Tension: The Power of Enabling Your Employees to Show Up Authentically
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
David Conrad
The Feeling of Data
2023 • Enterprise Community
Alla Weinberg
Healing Toxic Stress
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Christian Crumlish
Introduction by our Conference Chair
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Jon Fukuda
Storytelling for DesignOps
2023 • DesignOps Community
Patrick Boehler
Fishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold

More Videos

Dr. Karl Jeffries

"Think of a creative professional as an ideas athlete or a creativity Olympian."

Dr. Karl Jeffries

The Science of Creativity for DesignOps

January 8, 2024

Amy Marquez

"We use Alexa’s personification for good, fun, and delight, but we don’t advertise, especially because there may be kids listening."

Amy Marquez

INVEST: Discussion

June 15, 2018

Steve Portigal

"When you look at data without training, confirmation bias makes you just find what you already believe."

Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian Rohrer

Discussion

May 13, 2015

Alicia Mooty

"Agency style staffing allows designers to bring learnings across multiple projects and grow through new challenges."

Alicia Mooty

Design Staffing Models

September 30, 2021

Ana Maria Montero Barrantes

"UX should be a critical dependency, not an afterthought or checkbox on the to-do list."

Ana Maria Montero Barrantes Aditi Dhar Michelle Kaplan Nate Osborne Matt Laurence

The Authentic UX Talent Show

January 8, 2024

Lada Gorlenko

"We can’t complain about not having a seat at the table if we don’t offer one of our own."

Lada Gorlenko Sharbani Dhar Sébastien Malo Rob Mitzel Ivana Ng Michal Anne Rogondino

Theme 1: Discussion

January 8, 2024

Sofia Quintero

"We made it a priority from day one to support data exports so customers can leave without wasting weeks migrating data."

Sofia Quintero

The Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ

March 10, 2021

Laura Klein

"Large companies demand certainty, but certainty is the opposite of innovation."

Laura Klein

Unique challenges of innovation in enterprises

April 23, 2020

Andrew Michael

"Data analysts and user researchers rarely work together effectively, which is one of the biggest missed opportunities."

Andrew Michael

Building a Product Insights Team

March 10, 2022

Latest Books All books