PSFK Conference San Francisco Speaker Charles Ogilvie

We’re looking forward to having Charles Ogilvie, Director of Inflight Entertainment & Partnerships at Virgin America, share his insights on interface and interaction design at the PSFK Conference San Francisco. We asked him to tell us a little bit about himself, Virgin America, and where he finds his inspiration.

First, who are you and what do you do?

I’m Director of Inflight Entertainment & Partnerships at Virgin America. (For those who don’t know, we’re a new domestic airline in the US that launched 8-8-2007). We fly to 8 cities and have about 20 planes in service. Each of our planes has an entertainment and food delivery system we put together that is pretty unique - it enables our unbelievable inflight team to deliver an unprecedented onboard service.

You’ll be speaking on our “Look & Feel” panel. In one paragraph, can you sum up what innovation you are seeing in the approach to interface and interaction in your industry?

The airline industry has been notorious for inconvenience and uncomfortable situations. It’s really a good example of where technology can truly revolutionize an experience. We’ve changed the game by using individual interfaces and interaction points as gateways for passenger control.

For example:

You’re hungry: electronically order a meal and it is delivered moments later.

You want to make a playlist: select from more than 3000 MP3s.

You need or want to chat with somebody at a different seat(s): just touch a few buttons.

You want to access the internet: we have it in development right now and it is really a fun & exciting evolution! You’ll be able to get airborne access using your own devices (or our Red system’s seatback computers). We already have 2 WiFi access points per aircraft and we will offer air-to-ground data services on every plane in our fleet. So…this is joy for biz travelers and geeks everywhere – including my favorite geek, SMS buddy and tech lover Paris Hilton who just told me specifically to tell the psfk innovation crowd that “being able to text from my seat on the plane would be awesome”. There are other airlines doing more limited offerings, so we obviously are working with users to make sure we get it right and bring a robust product to our inflight experience. And yes, we will also allow wifi devices like the iPhone and Blackberry to access the air-to-ground connection and have a mini-portal that they connect through. SMS & BBIM at 35,000 feet, here we come!

Passengers with control over their situations have better experiences than those who don’t; it’s that simple. We try to give them more control wherever possible. Wish traffic to the airport was equally streamlined…

Five sites that provide you with inspiration:

who we are
where we’ve been
where we’re going
how we move forward

Thanks, Charles!

Like what Charles has to say? Want to hear more? Why not purchase one of our reasonably priced tickets for the PSFK Conference San Francisco?