Flight Pro
Aviation has come a long way in 100 years. As the industry modernizes, the interface of pilots, cockpits, has slowly caught up.
This started as a personal project of mine as I was interviewing at Facebook and Google. A lot of my agency work was under NDA and I was unable to share it at that time.
In 2018, I got to take a discovery flight, a part of pilot training, that allowed me to fly a plane (a personal dream of mine). When I was in the plane, I was struck by how overwhelming and outdated the instrumentation was. As a personal project, I explored ways to bring tech into the cockpit.
After researching cockpit orientations, understanding what the gauges all meant, and interviewing several pilots to understand pain points, I started to create different designs for "enhancements" the to cockpit.
This work led me to produce more and more advanced evolutions of the cockpit until I created Flight Pro, a look at what a future cockpit could look like.
This approach imagines a fully digital cockpit that can be reconfigured for different needs and planes. It sought to solve some pain points like hard to understand air traffic controller instructions. It also embraced new technology requirements, like ADS-B Out, which informs you to where other planes are around you and their details. This would improve overall safety and lower training times.
I also brought some everyday elements into the cockpit, like turn-by-turn instructions based on the flight plan and updated based on new directions from ATC.
The main dash shows the key indicators, with supplementary information taking the sides. The middle is for the map/navigation so it can be shared by the copilot. The co-pilot is a reverse view, but this can be adjusted to bring in video feeds or other information. The visor at the top displays information you'd use when flying by sight, so you can keep your eyes on whats outside your windshield.
The virtual nature means this can be adjusted across a number of planes, minimizing need for retraining or multiple interfaces. This would increase safety, reduce errors, and simplify the overall flying experience.
Since launching this project, I've been approached by several aerospace companies for usage rights and a non-profit aimed at getting kids excited about aviation jobs. My long term goal is to get this into a 3D model and interact with it in VR to get a true sense of it's usability.
