This episode features an interview with Dr. Rachelle Ornan, Director of Cabin Research and Passenger Experience and Associate Technical Fellow for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, specializing in the experience and design of commercial aircraft interiors. Before planes, she worked on spacecraft as a Human Factors Engineer and Industrial Designer for NASA. We talk with Rachelle about idealized design, balancing art and science, and what it takes to create a peaceful space to house the stress of travel.
This episode features an interview with Dr. Rachelle Ornan, Director of Cabin Research and Passenger Experience and Associate Technical Fellow for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, specializing in the experience and design of commercial aircraft interiors. Before planes, she worked on spacecraft as a Human Factors Engineer and Industrial Designer for NASA. We talk with Rachelle about idealized design, balancing art and science, and what it takes to create a peaceful space to house the stress of travel.
3 Takeaways:
Key Quotes:
Bio:
Dr. Rachelle N. Ornan, is an Associate Technical Fellow for Boeing Commercial Airplanes specializing in the experience and design of commercial aircraft interiors. Her background includes lighting and concept interior development for the CST-100 Starliner capsule, visual perception research, space hotel concepts for NASA, feature willingness-to-pay, and a comprehensive ethnographic study of interiors. Currently, she directs passenger experience research and bridges communication between sales and marketing, engineering and airlines to ensure a commercially viable, preferred product which maximizes revenue. Rachelle holds a PhD in experimental psychology, and a master’s in Industrial Design from North Carolina State University. She is a dog-mom, an avid skier, backpacker, competitive synchronized swimmer and currently pursuing her boat captain’s license.
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Phil Dillard: Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of The Customer Experience Show. I'm Phil Dillard, your host I'm here today with Rachelle Ornan from Boeing. How are you doing today?
Rachelle Ornan: I'm doing great. How are you?
Phil Dillard: I'm great. I should say Dr. Rochelle Ornan, she's a design researcher and experienced designer for aerospace and alternative environments. As I look at your bio, I go, this is pretty impressive. How do you describe who you are, what you do and what your role is at your company?
Rachelle Ornan: Wow. That's a really good question. It's actually something I've struggled with the entire time I've been at Boeing. I walk the line between design or art and science. I think I'm 50 50, and maybe I'm a dual personality, Jekyll and Hyde, but I've always had this huge interest in knowing why humans like things, why we think things are beautiful, why we behave a certain way to prove it, quantitatively. Statistically, but at the same time, I've got this tug where I really like to work with gut feeling. And I just w when you know, something's right, you just know it's right. Sometimes I joke that I get paid to talk or to run my mouth, which is often the case, because I'm really trying to, and bring people over to my side about the importance of cabin experience, to the overall levels of passenger satisfaction that we provide for our airline customers, and then subsequently for their customers for passengers. So my role in particular I've moved around the company quite a bit. I've been in, the concept center, innovative branch or arm of Boeing, I've been in sales and marketing where I've spoken to airlines and describe the value. Of passenger experience, compared to our competitors, but also in comparison to ourselves, I've been in product development all on all everything's had to do with interiors or what we call payloads, which is a really, militaristic term. It doesn't mean a lot to most lay people, but and now I am officially in the human factors group at Boeing, classified as a systems engineer. So I've been all over the place. I'm still the same person. And I bring all of these experiences with me. When I talk about customer and cabin experience.
Phil Dillard: That's great. It's great breadth of experience. And the more I talk to people who are great customer experience leaders, I think you have to have a breadth of understanding and experience and be a systems thinker to be able to really grasp how to deliver on customer experience in the way that you're in a really holistic and impactful way. So right out of the gate, you got me with a good one, right? Cause you said, I walked the line between design and science, which I think is critically important. I'm going to tie the two together because I think my assumption is there is a balance between the art side of knowing it's right. And the science side of knowing it's right. And how do you figure out. Which is which there's something intuitively knew that says it's right. But you have to prove this to a multi-billion-dollar corporation. So how do you do that?
Rachelle Ornan: Yes, the the challenge at hand. Most people at Boeing. Let's just say we are in the public known as an engineering led company. I, myself, am not an engineer and I was raised by one. So I have aspects of my personality that can jive with engineering speak. But I really, I feel like I'm paid to provide an alternate perspective because we have so much of the other thing, but I know that we've got to speak a similar language. And just like when you're speaking to anyone, if you can speak their language, you get your point across much more easily. I would say the technology that we use for this is science driven. It is survey design. And it is really just coming up with experimental questions and methodologies to get at what we're trying to prove. So I will say. When you're developing a new cabin interior, you do use a lot of tribal knowledge. We've been developing aircraft interiors for decades now, and we know what works and what doesn't. And with every new interior that you come up with, you have some interesting breakthroughs. If we had time, we could go through a history of all Boeing interiors, and I could tell you certain breakthroughs, but at some point you develop your mock-up, you test it with people with naive subjects, you test it with yourselves, and you get really smart about what's working and what's not. And you use a lot of gut feel, but in the end when this thing starts flying, or let's say you've whittled it down and you've come to the concept of the design that seems to work best, quantitatively. Cause we often do that, but then you start flying it. You've got a validation exercise to go through and now you actually have. Passengers who are experiencing it, so we're usually trying to improve greatly upon the last airplane interior that week that we came up with. So the gut feel comes in and then when you really have to do the competitive analysis, the quantitative really comes in handy and that's actually what makes the sale, to your leadership about that you did the right thing and that this direction is , is now a proven design direction. And it makes a sale to your airline customers and downstream to the passengers.
Phil Dillard: So there's once again, so much good stuff there because I heard a lot there and I really liked to break this down. Cause I think this is really good stuff for the audience, I'll start where you ended making the sale to leadership and to the customer. And, we have listeners who are. Coming from all different places. But one of the things I talk about a lot with people is lean startup, lean innovation or the, or modern management practices. Whereas it's not a waterfall approach, but there is an iterative approach right now. Some people I would expect to believe that building and flying an airplane is a waterfall, approach because you're going to dine. You're gonna put it out there and then you're going to hope it works. But I'm getting a feeling that's, you would say that's not the case. When you're making the sale. My assumption is that there are a number of different sales along the way that you're selling iteratively to leadership and you're selling iteratively customers. And that once the airplane is actually in the market, there is ability to respond to the customer experience as well. So can you talk a little bit about those experiences along the way you're early, mid late, and the, those different sales, those different customers that you're serving, all of whom need to say yes for this to be an accessible, successful iteration from the previous aircraft interior model that you talked about. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Rachelle Ornan: I'm going to get back to this tribal knowledge thing. And I, to me it's just fascinating. Before I was involved with airplanes, I was doing the majority of my thinking about spacecraft, and really just about small space design, because for whatever reason, I've no idea where this came from. I just really like spaces where people are a little bit under pressure and, you can have some interesting reactions and just the need to really vet and really use the space, the volume of travel available and use it really effectively, efficiently, and make people happy and make people calm. So along the way you've got these breakthroughs, one example would be, really, the second someone walks on board, you want them to feel calm and comfortable and that the space is somewhat expansive. And I know it sounds absolutely the opposite of what you have on an airplane, but before the show, you and I were talking about your experience on the seven 87, the Dreamliner, and that is something really that, that kind of takes people by surprise. An airline has a choice in deciding or purchasing certain features because we give them the option. And that's what we like to do. We don't ever prescribe, you must go with this or this, but one example is the entryway and some airlines have taken it. The airlines that have taken the domed entryway have seen significant upticks in passenger satisfaction and experience compared to the airlines that have it on the eight, seven. Now that's not to say the eight, seven doesn't hit it out of the park because it does, but the entryway, the domed entryway, it's actually curved above your head and it is with a beautiful blue color. Blue is something that all humans can relate to. We are all born with the sky over our head, no matter where you're from. And to have that feeling of expansiveness, the second you walk on an airplane it's almost a visual illusion, if you will, because the plane looks bigger on the inside than it does from the outside when you see the aircraft. So that's something that we have learned along the way, and during the development of the eight, seven, which, I'm going to be totally honest here. It was before my time at Boeing, but I've heard all of these amazing stories from the working together of the engineers, with the marketers, with the sales team, with the airlines. It was really a village effort. If you will. But bringing people along with you in that regard, even in the early phases of research , we use a lot of different methodologies. We use a technique called idealized design if you've ever heard of that. And it's a really wonderful technique because it has the passenger, the subject, the person, think about what would be the most amazing experience ever and why, and work back from that. So you're starting with the best possible thing ever imaginable. And then you're trying to draw insights backwards from that. So when we start that research and when we involve a variety of people from different backgrounds within the company, We find that you get buy-in at all different levels because, there is a transformation that happens when people feel a part of something. And when they actually feel moved by the experience and that's the kind of research that we invest in and that those are the kinds of insights. They tend to be more qualitative at that level. But those are the really interesting design nuggets that come from a really deep-seated place, an emotional place, a human place. And when we translate that into the built environment, you've got a lot of people nodding their heads. Oh yeah. We’ve seen this process and we're on board. We're with this and we all want to see this succeed. So I hope that answers some of your questions.
Phil Dillard: All of the process, this idealized design techniques you talk about, it sounds a lot like the different design techniques that I see as the future of work. I see as emerging across a number of different industries, people are saying, we need to be multidisciplinary. We need to be inclusive in our thinking. We need to be engaging other disciplines and pulling those backgrounds together. And then you get all this extra richness in it, but also people who want to see things succeed and this engagement and buy-in and makes it the whole experience, not only the end product better, but the process to getting it in a better. Is that a fair statement?
Rachelle Ornan: I think it's very fair statement. I think with techniques like this, you encourage your employees and your managers whoever's in that process, you encourage them to bring their entire self to the process. It's not so much that you leave part of you behind when you get to work. You know what I'm saying? I try to be the most authentic person I can be by bringing my background and just my, my own human experiences, along with me and not trying to conceal it, but trying to roll it into the conversations I have every day. Trying to convince people that, I can relate to you even though I'm of a different background or what have you, diversity is huge. So yeah, I think it bringing the whole person to work, and to product development is where it's at.
Phil Dillard: That's awesome. It ties to a question that I was going to come back to about when you mentioned there's being an engineering led company, and often when a company is an engineering led company, people think that it's cold, it's rigid. It's it's, there, there are some stereotypes come to mind, right? You think of IBM guys in from the fifties and sixties and white shirts and black ties, people think of that as engineers. But what I'm hearing you say is that this approach of bringing your whole self to work is bringing for lack of a better phrase some color to that, black and white picture. So my question to you is. Are you seeing this sort of work that fits with the culture or that changes the culture in some way?
Rachelle Ornan: I think that the culture is certainly changing. I'm really grateful to the new generations that I see coming to Boeing. I absolutely love. Sharing their opinions and how they approach problems. I'm gen X-er, I think we were maybe gonna discuss some generational differences in how we are planning for the future traveler and we can get to that too, but we definitely see that in the workplace. I think that the new generations are used to. Having choice. They're used to experiential design. In fact, that's something they themselves are after a much better than the experience of luxury or prestige, for example. And that's serving to break down walls and hierarchies that you see in the workplace. Boeing's got amazing benefits, like sending people back to school. And some of the programs that are now funded are quite diverse. And they also represent the types of backgrounds and academic backgrounds, that we want new hires to have. The new hires are bringing a really open-minded attitude towards, the combination of disciplines and getting back to some of my background and that whole walking the line between science and art. I remember having to be in two separate departments, and having to a light bulb, turn my science side off. When I went over to the design school and was working on the furniture design on the shop tools. And then when I went over to the. Psychology side. I, I I was ready to put my thinking cap on and the statistics side of things, and there really wasn't a whole lot of overlap. I think when I was finishing, there were some common tutorial coursework. They were like senior capstone projects where you've got the business school students and the engineers and the design students and the psych students all in one, working on a common project, which is amazing because, Hey, isn't that what real work is and it's so good to introduce the students to that, at that phase in in school. But I do see the work environment changing. And I think it's all very positive, but back to, the engineers and the black tie and the horn-rimmed glasses and the pocket protectors and all that good stuff, remember the movie, the right stuff, seeing all that, I start thinking like, what kind of person do I want designing my aircraft and my spacecraft. I actually do want those people to, I really do.
Phil Dillard: Oh sure. You want them both. You need them. All right. But I think the thing that, that I heard you say that I would bottom line too, like that people don't have to code, switch. In this environment, it could be effective in the culture. And that's a big deal, right? If you are actually, you and your, and the organization or the processes, and the systems are designing that, and that's, that is becoming a strength in your product development space. That is a big value of embracing those folks. So that's something that's huge from a organizational perspective and from customer experience perspective, because your customers look like all different types of people from around the world they're globally diverse and having those different influences into the products you develop seems to indicate that's going to be more universally accepted. If you embrace that, as opposed to shoehorning people into something, which brings me back to the earlier, earlier point you made, and the last part of this phase, this segment that I want to cover. And it's the part about the tribal knowledge. And it's you have this tribal knowledge, but you want to be able to quantify. And I feel like there's probably a space in there where you want to codify something. But maybe not too much, like everybody knows that blue skies are comforting. Cause everybody sees blue skies. So like when do. You get to the point to codify the tribal knowledge? And when you get to the point to just accept it in this environment where there's so much, so many different backgrounds and so much change, chess, questioning the status quo,
Rachelle Ornan: I think it's really important to codify it for the majority of employees so that people are informed, and they know exactly why we do the things that we do now. I don't, I don't spend a lot of time, talking about P values or statistical significance from the research experiments that we've run when I'm doing , road shows internally. But we try to come up with, I would say, shortcuts to remind people of what it is, the things that we do. And, and so that people could even explain it to your neighbor or explain it to your grandmother, explain it in a way that is very easy and that everyone can relate to. And I think that it gets people quite excited when they start to feel a part of that process. So if you are an engineer and you do tend to be more on the quantitative side of things, having insight into how exactly we sell our products and the kinds of techniques we use to develop these insights, develop the tribal knowledge and everybody's got tribal knowledge. I've got it from the interior side of things. We've got it from every single commodity that gets put on the airplane, every single system. But I think it's important to have it codified so that everyone can repeat the same mantra and feels a part of it. To be able to talk about the product as the flying experience, what makes flying magical, what connects all of us as you alluded to before? No matter what your background the feeling of freedom, the feeling of, I can do anything because I can travel somewhere even to the feeling of. I dunno, I get a little philosophical and dreamy sometimes about, about the work, because I think, I really believe that travel, it helps economies. It connects us to each other. It pulls people out of poverty. It's just, I could go on and on, but this is the big stuff that I think Boeing connects the world to.
Phil Dillard: Yeah, sure. Travel experience allows different cultures to connect. In a very positive and tangible way. And I think is an important thing for humanity, right? It's one thing to. see people on the screen. It's another thing to actually go touch them outside my recent trip to Korea, huge difference of seeing it, hearing it things, seeing to people in the flesh versus the videos and the conversations, whatever you can, you just can't really understand the different people, the way you can, by being there with them and seeing them and having their feel and I think your cover your point about the experience, all different components of the experience mattered. This is one of the things we hear common. Every part of the experience matters. But the other simple component of that is like, There's a big difference between the restroom in the Dreamliner and the rest room on the, I don't know the first aircraft that I was on, where I could barely move around and fit inside the space. Each little experience matters. And if one is a miss, it breaks the seamlessness of the experience. I think that's the thing that you're alluding to and I would hope that our listeners think about when we get to this. So as I slide into the section where we get into a little more detail, we have some more of those specific questions that you want to talk about in the detail. First one, you mentioned how being a consumer of experiences means using all five I love that. How does Boeing do that?
Rachelle Ornan: So I think I'm going to answer it in a way that's backwards in a way. And I want to explain the product from the perspective of our customer, the airline wants their brand to be plastered all over the cabin, right? The interior. They don't want Boeing to be flashing or neon sign. Hey, this is branded by Boeing, right? We take a back seat to the airlines, branding and messaging. And we have to, we're the blank slate pallet, if you will. The airlines get to add on all their multilayers of cabin experience and immersive design and smells, tastes the food, the menu, the cabin service, all of that stuff. So what we try to do is enable the five senses essentially. And what we have found in our research is sometimes it's the absence of those things that make the difference. So we would not want to brand our cabins with a particular scent, for example, but we do know that airlines like to do that. So we make sure that we can offer features that allow that to happen. That's probably the biggest thing we try to steer clear of, I would say, but in terms of vision and. It sound, we're always looking for ways to improve sound quality, to reduce noise levels in the cabin. As far as light and immersive feelings, the cabinet itself does that by providing a really nurturing feel. If you go back in the history of interiors, you'll see, the interior is go with trends you would see, and, other parts like furniture design or fashion, or even home design, the, the waffle ceilings of the seventies, I would say, if you look at some Boeing designs, you'll see, we have some very similar look and feel like that too. But what we started to go away from that and are R. Mantra our design philosophy is that we create timeless interiors because I have to last for a really long time. For example, what we say internally, we say that a Boeing Dreamliner can last 80 years, and you have to also think about not every airline is going to either have the money or take the time to change the interiors. So having something that we know has proven calming effects on passengers, that it's. Got the baggage and storage capacity. For example, our pivot bins, you may know growing up and taking airplanes that used to be called shelf bins. And that actually came from hat racks, believe it or not, because that's all you used to carry on. The plane was your hat in the thirties, put your hat on the hat rack. And your luggage is somewhere else, but people want their items close by to them because it's an extension of you, right? All your stuff in there. You want to be able to see it. You want to know it's really right next to you and people don't want to pay to fly their bags. So having more room, more volume in a pivot then, which are the bins that move up and out of the way and have the convex and exterior creates soft organic lines that what we've found combined with the appropriate lighting gives the, the impression of a larger. Interior because it's super well-lit and you can modulate space by, having areas of, lower illumination using certain colors, natural scenes. For example, we, we've been talking about the Dreamliner a lot, the dream of our comes with 14 preset lighting scenes for the customers, and the led lighting, which was first of its kind to be introduced on an aircraft, provides, the whole color spectrum for an airline. We tend to encourage them to use lights and colors that you would find in nature. But on occasion, come on. It's super fun to. Have that one, one of the scenes is this rolling rainbow that goes down to the cabin
Phil Dillard: Sure
Rachelle Ornan: That's just like super celebratory. And I'm sure the kids like it. And the kid in me loves that. So we enable the five senses to be used to the best of our abilities. I don't think we really cover tastes the airlines do that's for sure. We do, because we know, increased cabin humidity has an impact on enjoyment of the flight, not feeling dehydrated, not having irritations, all of those things factor into, how the food tastes, how comfortable you are, how easy is it for you to fall asleep and stay asleep. And then those are the things that, at least as far the Dreamliner is concerned and aircraft, after that, we've been able with a carbon fiber fuselage, we've been able to increase cabin levels of humidity and to decrease cabin altitude, which has huge effects on passenger satisfaction, the feeling of health and vitality. And once you land, it’s as if you feel like you were just sleeping at home. And that's why we have business class travelers that actually chase that aircraft so that they can arrive rested and ready to hit the ground, running to whatever they need to do once they land.
Phil Dillard: Yeah, sure. After having been a war roadway or a consultant for a number of years, I know who will pick flights based on the type of aircraft who will go to the seat gurus and sites like that to pick the seats on the aircraft, because they know the good seats and they know the good planes and won't fly certain routes because of certain planes. So all that stuff you talked about not only is sounds amazing, but I know is valued by a certain segment of the population. And I've met other folks who hear it now might actually think about that a little bit more. So thanks so much for sharing that. I actually want to continue on that thread, because we noticed that in an interview for runway girl network, you talked about how in making a purchase, people are swayed by aspirational goals can you talk about how that experience speaks to people's aspirational goals?
Rachelle Ornan: Yeah, you can get a little philosophical on this too. Just, for so many people that being in the majority of the world has yet to fly and to be able to board an aircraft and to take your first flight is hugely aspirational for, most of the world these days. So being able to provide that experience and being able to help the airlines figure out. Their price point, help them increase their revenue, help them understand cabin configuration that, provides the, provides them the highest revenues so that they can offer people, who have yet to fly the ability to fly for a reasonable bull price. And to have that experience. Also, some airlines really have this dialed , in terms of offering features, or I want to say, I will say aspirational features, but in economy, class, interesting when you have people walk through a business class section to get into the economy class section that happens sometimes on aircraft , simply by walking through that, it can be a little aspirational or make people super jealous but some airlines really haven't dialed where they've got the, they've got the wifi, the free wifi, the high bandwidth, the ability to stream anything you want, whenever you want connect with other passengers in the seats, using flight apps the movies that you can see, you don't have to prepare any more. You can just show up and have a cinema experience and not have to. And it's so immersive. And I don't know, it's. I always feel special to me. In fact, that's the only time I ever watch movies anymore. I just go for it. And I never ended up getting sleep on long flights because of that. But offering, Emirates in their economy, class offers, I don't know, something like 500 channels in the in-flight entertainment in economy class. Wow. Talk about being treated to that experience. I think that's aspirational is that you get treated experientially, you can get treated in a way that you don't normally experience. Seeing the colors see, being treated too. A beautiful interior, nice and clean and bright and well-lit and people are smiling and happy to be going somewhere. I think that makes everybody feel good. And when the flight attendants feel happy that they're on a flight, they're on a aircraft that makes them feel good. That's really the biggest aspect of passenger satisfaction. It really comes down to the service that is provided by the cabin crew. And so also our customers, if you think about it, and one of, one of the commodities I absolutely love, and I wish I could spend more time on this commodity, but it's the crew rest by providing a place of respite, of calm of peace and quiet and good sleep environment for the cabin crew for flight attendants on long flights and for pilots. That's one way they can keep their energy and motivation up. It's like your little tree house,
Phil Dillard: Yeah, absolutely. It's what I'm hearing as you're talking about. This is another layer to the customer experience challenge that you have. The first layer is the internal organization one, and then there's the design, the art and the design one and know? feedback with customers. But there's another one, right? It's and you described this as you create a palette. For the airline to build on. But you also probably have to influence what sort of things that they put onto the pallet so that it uses the canvas, it uses the resource that you've given them in the best way. How much do you inspire the creation for the airline of what they put on the pallet? I'm thinking of things like, do you have to work out a brand guide? Do you an interaction? I'm sure there's a pretty detailed interaction with the airline to try and help them get the most out of this. And is that something that you do in as part of the design of the interior?
Rachelle Ornan: Yes. During the development of new aircraft interiors, there are working groups. So we will bring a whole cadre of airlines in to get their feedback about what it is that they're looking for in their next aircraft. And then along the way, you continue to bring them in to make sure that you're meeting their requirements. It's really important to do that with a wide variety of airlines, because everybody brings their own perspective and brand requirements, right? Some airlines are really trying to tap into that exclusivity factor, that luxury factor, whereas other airlines just want to get you there and back, for as cheap as possible. And they may be completely stripping. Their experience for you in order to provide such a good price point. So able to juggle the needs of, the ends of the spectrum. It's challenging with the same product. So what you find is, modularity is something. It's a huge aspect of what we do. But you have to do it within limits. You can't just have the entire aircraft, be able to be modified or you couldn't manufacture it. You could manufacture it in the numbers. That would make sense. So you do work with the airline and there's a whole level of people that do get a chance to do this. They're called customer engineers. They work with, with airlines on the seating decisions. In my previous role in marketing, I worked on configurations that would help airlines maximize revenue. Sometimes you work with an airline the premium economy experience. If any of you listeners out there have bought up paid more for that experience, a little more leg room back in the day you got, maybe free beverages, alcohol, mice, or food, head rest, things like that. More reclined, some airlines are more familiar with. Let's say new cabin classes than others. Some airlines are leading that while others are following and you have to be able to be ready to convince, even though we know it's a well-founded trend, let's say, you still have to convince them because it logically, it doesn't really make sense. Okay, I'm going to give more space and I'm going to make more money. I know everyone is aware of the numbers game and yes, seat pitch has decreased over the years. It is a numbers game and it, of course, it's a low margins numbers game. So it's a really sensitive balance, but to add a premium economy section, it will in fact increase revenue. And sometimes you've got to bring the customer along. With numbers, with economic modeling and revenue analysis, to show that, in fact it is the case. If you offer this product, you will net this increase over, 20 years, whatever it is, and net present value, they’re looking at, we're seeing some other interesting trends happen, even in the, say more luxurious cabin classes. So of course, COVID has shaken the foundation of what we know to be business travel. So what you're seeing is some airlines starting to dabble in sub classes within business class. So do you just want to sleep? And you're cool with bringing your own snack and you really don't need that whole like 12 course meal that keeps waking you up. You just want to sleep. You can do that. And so you can now, I guess it's in a way an a la carte menu, it's getting much easier to do that with technology to book it and to deliver it even on the aircraft, with tools of technology that you can select what makes sense for you at that time. So you don't have a one size fits all, requirement anymore. As a consumer, you get many more options these days and airlines are taking advantage of that. They're really starting to dig into, the nexus, the synergy between new technologies and customization of experience.
Phil Dillard: Wow. Yeah. That's that's great. And it makes a ton of sense. It seems like a very complex landscape that you got to get into. I attempted to ask a little bit more about that on the differences in the insights that you have on the generational and demographic experience. As in are you seeing the same sort of trends when you think about generational and demographic tendencies and needs and experiences.
Rachelle Ornan: In terms of the generations. The research that we've done, it certainly indicates large differences in expectations. Of the flying public, gen Z is I believe 41% larger than the millennial generation. So this is a wave that's coming our way. The main differences between millennials and gen Z is of course the way technology was introduced to them or whether they never had an introduction. It just was. So it's almost as far as millennials go, you get your first cell phone when you're a tween, and if you go back to, if I reflect on my experiences as a teenager I could get away from my parents. I just ran down the street and they couldn't find me. Or I took the car, and I was gone. Good luck trying to find me. I, Usually was a good kid came home on time, but the millennials it’s something hard for previous generations to understand, but there's always this like lifeline, I guess it's the helicopter parenting thing as coming through the, cell phone waves. You've always got that connection. Which do you ever really feel free? I don't know. I'm not a millennial. Can't really say that, but of course we have studied that. So we see that millennials have one foot in how things used to be like nostalgic memories of their and generations before them, vintage stuff. And, we want all that stuff, but at the same time, feel this urge this hunger to have that connectivity. And I think sometimes they don't even know where it's coming from, which can be translated into just a general feeling of axed. If you don't have it. And the gen Zs and the alphas are still quite young, we don't know as much about them, but the gen Z's are like, it's fluid, man. They've got technology. They don't have to worry about that stuff. It's totally seamless, thinking of themselves as the avatar world, the online presence. It's just a, it's not even considered another language. It isn't language. It's just so fluid. So the expectations of technology and how, seamless things need to be. That's it's really, that's, what's distinguishing things. So Boeing the manufacturer and the airlines have to keep up with that. They've got to provide that seamlessness and you're seeing airlines start to dabble in the door-to-door journey. So making the second you leave your home, your micro apartment in Hong Kong or whatever it is because you want to get out and have experiences rather than putting money into a super deluxe apartment. That's another thing where we're, we've noticed, it's experientially driven, but you've got to help people make their last-minute decisions in order to optimize their experiences. Recognize that there's fear of missing out. That's still going on. And to some extent it's bled off into the older generations too. I certainly experienced that sometimes, but you've got to enable. And indulge, right? Yeah.
Phil Dillard: Yeah. Super. Wow. As expected, time went really fast. I know we have a couple of minutes and we don't want to go way over your time and we'll respect your time for the day. So when a pop into the lightening round, but these are real quick questions to get your feet. I usually ask the same three questions to everyone, the first one is as a customer, what's your one example of one of your favorite experiences?
Rachelle Ornan: It took me like a whole day to think of the answer being as it is, COVID, your do spend a lot of time online, maybe doing some online shopping. For some reason, somebody got my number, and I got this email or online coupon or invitation to try out this make your own lipstick color and have it delivered to you like in three days. And I'm not going anywhere. I don't really need lipstick. We don't really use webcams at Boeing too much anyway. So I'm just dressing up for myself, but, and the dog, but it's called, She Spoke and I'm going to give them a shout out because I have to say during the experience of picking this color, I just, I was like, God, I wish I'd thought of this myself. I know this is not going to be for everyone, but if you want to go check it out, if you're into lipstick or not, but there, for me, I'm the kind of person that could go into a paint store, take all of the paint chips and sit there for hours, possibly days just making different combination of colors and like being so proud of myself for coming up with this unique thing that I can almost taste the success like multi-sensory , kind of experience. And that is what. She spoke to it. For me, it really made me feel like the best version of myself and reminded me of the things that I like to do. And it really invites you to play and have a good time. And it is multi-sensory, because at the end you get to add, sprinkle your pixie dust on everything. Oh, the little of this sense, I'll have a little of this glitter. And then at the end you get to call it whatever you want, you get to name it and then you get the tube of lipstick, and it is just how you envisioned it with a color chip and everything. And your name is like that just printed on it. It's like a kind of engraved
Phil Dillard: Wow. Pretty impressive.
Rachelle Ornan: Pretty impressive. So I'm going to say that's my favorite online experience recently.
Phil Dillard: Yeah. Thanks so much for that. That's awesome. Last two. Okay. If there's one thing you would change about people's perception of the role of customer experience at a company, what would it be?
Rachelle Ornan: I think that when people shy away from customer experience that they are uncomfortable with it. I really like to remind them that they do this every single day. Every day, you're making a decision about what fast food restaurant to go to, or going back to the home Depot Lowe's or whatever, experience the down to the kind of car that you drive. I'll often say that you are not driving a Toyota Corolla, you chose a Jaguar. I know you have a background in engineering and all these other things, and you may be uncomfortable with what I'm talking about, but I'm looking at this parking lot and I'm seeing definite design decisions and customer experience decisions being made. I cannot believe that, you can't understand this. So I would just say what look at your own life. You do it all the time.
Phil Dillard: Yeah, it's a commonplace art. And can you go, I don't know. It looks nice and you don't really know why it's looks nice to really think about it. And if people are trying to understand design and understand experience a little bit more and not think of it as a Fu thing, but as that, as you said, bright combination of art and science and practice and an experience And disciplines, then people could really see the value.
Rachelle Ornan: And emotion, right? Our peak experiences are often accompanied by emotion and it will forever seal that memory. All those things are at play. Okay.
Phil Dillard: But then you have to implement it, which leads to our last question, so what one lesson would you want someone to take away from your experience and building customer experience?
Rachelle Ornan: Oh lesson, I'm just like, okay, I'm going to do the opposite of just what I just said. I'm going to contradict myself. Okay. So sometimes decisions get made purely based on your experience. Sometimes I'll see an executive from an airline or even an internal to Boeing, or even some friends, sit in a seat or look at something and just be like, Nope, I'm not going to go with this. This is super uncomfortable. No, we're not going with this, this model of no. And you're like, okay, why? Oh, you know what? You happen to be six foot four and this seat pitch. 30 inches is it's a little tight with your leg. I understand that, effectively, this is a slim line seat. So it's giving you back two to four inches of feel because we've slimmed down the cushion. I maybe increased a little recline and visual space from the front of the IFE screen to your eye position. I can go into all of that, but they want to hear it simply because their body measurement does not work. Even though they are experiencing the emotion of dislike, just like contrary to what I just said, you have to expand the understanding of who they're selecting for, and to broaden the perspective that it is not just for you. So you have to point that out too. Not everybody wants to hear that, so you have to do it in a kind gentle way, but just to remind them of that. They have to step back. And the N of one is not a good way to make a decision.
Phil Dillard: Yeah. Yeah.
Rachelle Ornan: Sometimes it's just a really quick decision, right? It's a knee jerk reaction to something and you almost have to buy some time, with the individual so that they can, better gauge how exactly they want to make this decision, to keep the conversation flowing. So it doesn't shut it down right away. And I think that's where all the emotional intelligence and all that other good stuff that we talk about when we think about great.
Phil Dillard: Then you let them come around to it, then you let them come around to it on their own. And they come around too.
Rachelle Ornan: It's always good to have them. Think it's their decision. Everybody says that, but it's also good sometimes in your presentation to have something that maybe stands out that somebody wants to critique because everybody wants to look like they're paying attention and they got one over on you. And so just use that as a giveaway.
Phil Dillard: That's great. So that's a twofer, right?
Rachelle Ornan: Be generous.
Phil Dillard: Thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate the depths and the quality of the sharing.
And I hope our audience will too.
Rachelle Ornan: Oh, you're most welcome. I had a wonderful time and thank you so much for inviting me.
Phil Dillard: Thanks for showing up and thank you everyone for joining, and we'll see you again, next time on our next episode of the customer experience show, talk to you soon.