Case study · Honeywell Aerospace

Imagining the cockpit of the future at Honeywell

Our team made Honeywell Aerospace's concept film of a connected cockpit, from storyboards to motion graphics.

Role: Designer, Honeywell User Experience (HUE)
Organization: Honeywell Aerospace
Platform: Concept film: cockpit displays, mobile, wearables and the control tower

Render of a concept cockpit: one curved black display across the dash with flight data, a weather map and camera views, a row of glowing function icons below it, and touch-panel side consoles with a throttle and a stick

In short

01Honeywell Aerospace wanted a film for PAC Week that showed what a connected flight could feel like, with the cockpit at its center.
02We built the After Effects comps scene by scene: the phone app, incoming calls, HUD overlays and the flight information map.
03The week produced "A Vision for Connected Experiences", a concept film cut daily through the week. It was a vision piece, not a product.

storyboarding
interaction concepts · touch, gesture, video calls, smart glasses
3D cockpit model and renders
motion design · After Effects, scenes 1, 11, 16–17 and 22–24
concept film

01Opportunity

A film about one flight and everyone around it

For Honeywell Aerospace's PAC Week, our team in Honeywell User Experience (HUE) made a concept film called "A Vision for Connected Experiences".

It follows one business jet flight through the people who touch it: a passenger, the pilots, a maintenance tech and an air traffic controller. The cockpit sits in the middle of all of them.

The question was simple to ask and hard to show. What changes when the cockpit is connected to everyone else?

Film frame: a pilot in the concept cockpit at sunset, with a floating panel reading "Course set to ORD: confirmed, FMS updated" above the curved display — A frame from the final film. The course change is confirmed in the pilot's view, and the flight management system updates with it.

02Hypothesis

Bring the tower, flight ops and maintenance into the cockpit

The storyboards started from conversations, not instruments. In one, a call from the tower arrives on the main display and the pilot taps Accept.

In another, the tower, flight operations and the director of maintenance share the screen at once. Maintenance says the part can be installed in 15 minutes if it arrives in time.

The bet was that a connected cockpit could put the people a pilot depends on in one view, instead of relaying messages between them.

Pencil storyboard: two pilots in a cockpit, the main display shows "Incoming call from tower, Accept? Cancel" and a hand presses an Accept button — Storyboard for the incoming call from the tower. The call lands on the main flight display, one tap from the pilot.

Pencil storyboard: three video feeds labelled Tower, Flight Op and Dir. of Maint across the cockpit windows, with a speech bubble saying the part can be installed in 15 minutes — Storyboard for the three-way call. Tower, flight ops and maintenance appear together, so the pilot hears the plan once.

03Experiments

Weather, calls and a curved glass flight deck

We built the cockpit as a 3D model: one curved display across the dash, a row of function icons, touch side consoles and a lower touch display. Each display got its own graphic, and the renders were composited into the film.

The weather scene is the heart of it. A warning says Flight 111's current route is headed into a storm. The pilot touches alternative routes, and each one shows fuel usage, temperature, winds aloft, time, engine and brakes before one is selected.

We built After Effects comps for each scene, including scenes 1, 11, 16–17 and 22–24: the passenger's phone app and incoming call, the HUD-style call overlays, and the flight information map with its alert.

3D weather display: red and green storm cells over terrain, a yellow warning reading "Flight 111, current route headed into storm", and a finger tracing a yellow alternative route labelled Route 2 with fuel, temperature, winds aloft, time, engine and brakes — Rerouting around a storm by touch. Each alternative route shows its cost in fuel, time and wind before the pilot commits.

Film frame: a pilot looks at a floating video call window from the control tower above the curved cockpit display — The tower's call answered in the cockpit, as storyboarded. The call sits above the flight displays, not in place of them.

Film frame: three video feeds of people in a row on a panel above the cockpit dash at sunset — The three-way call from the storyboard, made real in the film.

04Learning

The cockpit was one part of a wider loop

Drawing the cockpit forced us to draw everyone around it. A maintenance tech's glasses flag the auxiliary power unit: replace after 50 hours, order the part now. A moment later the part is ordered and paid for.

A scan shows the aircraft's structure through its skin. In the tower, a controller sweeps the storm across the windows by hand and points at flights around O'Hare.

Each of those moments feeds the same flight. The cockpit was only as useful as the information reaching it.

View through smart glasses of a jet's tail engine, with text reading "APU: Status, replace after 50 hours, order part now" — Smart glasses on the ramp. The tech sees the part's status on the aircraft itself and orders it on the spot.

Concept business jet on a desert ramp rendered as a purple wireframe, revealing its structure, engines and landing gear — The aircraft scan render, one of a before-and-after pair. It shows the inspection idea: see inside the airframe without opening it.

Silhouette of a controller in a tower pointing at a holographic dome of flights around ORD Airport, labelled 111, 1141 and 1911 — The tower's view of the same flights. The controller works the airspace with gestures in front of the windows.

05Outcome

Daily cuts to a finished vision film

We cut the film daily, from a day 1 cut to the final version. Early cuts still had placeholder cards where shots weren't ready.

The result was a concept film, not a product plan. It showed Honeywell Aerospace a cockpit built around people and connections.