April 2, 2015 – Over the past few months Zodiac Seats UK’s (ZSUK) business development department has been working with the University of West of England to give its final year students the opportunity to experience a real-life design industry project.
The brief given to the students was to “design an aircraft cabin interior seating environment, for use primarily by professionals on long-haul flights, which balances the needs of both the end user (passenger) and the airline (buyer).” The full brief was designed to provide a level of freedom that would allow genuinely new ideas, but also ensure an undertone of realism to steer the students towards a concept that may actually be possible to realize. To ensure that all creative and technical aspects were considered, all teams had a mixture of both creative product and product design technology students.
Recently the students visited the ZSUK facility and presented their final concepts to both their lecturers and members of ZSUK’s business development department, who report they were impressed by the standard of work produced from the students. Rob Gow from the team commented, “Many of the concepts generated present real value to the company, and it will now be exciting to see if and how they may be developed and incorporated into actual Zodiac Aerospace products.”
The winning team will visit the Hamburg Aircraft Interiors Expo this year, as a guest of Zodiac Aerospace, providing the students with the opportunity to experience the event and further increase their industry knowledge.
