ST Y LE & D ESIGN
1. STYLE&DESIGN HAS DEVISED THIS
BUSINESS CLASS SEAT FOR THE A350
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ANNUAL SHOWCASE 2020 089
Indeed at a time when the aviation
industry is just starting to recognise the
importance of perceived quality,
Style&Design can demonstrate a great
level of maturity in this field. This expertise
is embodied by the launch of BenchmarQ,
an innovative system that can translate
the perceived quality of business class
seats into data.
For Style&Design, perceived quality
engages any organisation developing and
manufacturing complex products into
a virtuous circle that is favourable to
mastering the fragile balance between
styling and engineering.
This balance is only possible if one
has an objective view of perceived quality
in the cabin. Thus even an exciting,
ambitious and large project to launch
a business class seat can be assessed
dispassionately following a calculation
of perceived quality.
BenchmarQ can engage the various
stakeholders in a project and ensure that
they begin work with a sound foundation:
a clear vision of the primary perceived
quality goals (from the low-hanging fruit,
to the more strategic and complex topics).
Capitalising on its experience of
perceived quality in the automotive sector,
Style&Design has developed a complex
protocol that is able to score – from a pure
perceived quality prospective – any
business class seat during any commercial
flight of longer than six hours (it takes five
or six hours to perform a full assessment).
This cold, mechanical process,
performed by a handful of trained
Style&Design experts, does not take into
account styling or colour and trim choices,
but rather how the ambitions of a project
have been executed – qualitative
engineering, if you will.
Many criteria are considered during the
assessment of each seat subassembly,
related to the form of a design concept
(gaps, flushness, assembly, interface, etc),
its appearance (covers, stitching, padding,
brightness, colour matching, etc) and
usage factors (marks, premature wear,
sound, noise, ergonomics, etc) that
contribute to the passenger experience.
Examples of factors under assessment
include seats, seat shells, lighting,
ottomans, HMI, stowages, tables and
privacy dividers. Also all the key
dimensions characterising comfort and
“A COMPLEX PROTOCOL THAT IS
ABLE TO SCORE ANY BUSINESS
CLASS SEAT”
Style&Design
projects include
the HD31 seating
concept for Zodiac
Aerospace
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