Prototyping the electric aviation customer journey to bridge understanding gaps

How to prototype the future captures a central challenge in innovation. Developers and researchers find themselves in a situation where the concrete solution is not yet available for testing. As technological development accelerates and societal expectations evolve, organisations are increasingly required to make decisions about services, products and infrastructures that cannot be tested through traditional means.

In such contexts, prototyping shifts from validating existing ideas to exploring possibilities and enabling stakeholders to engage with future scenarios before they are technically or commercially feasible.

Particularly in emerging fields such as electric aviation, the gap between vision and implementation remains significant. While technological components are advancing rapidly, fully operational ecosystems, such as urban airfields, safety regulations or new customer journeys, are still in development.

How can designers and decision-makers assess usability, desirability, and value when real-life testing is not yet possible? This article explores that question through the case of electric aviation, using demo videos as a prototyping tool. It also shows that prototyping is not only a development tool, but a means of bridging the gap between imagination and implementation by bringing future experiences into present-day decision-making.

Electric aviation is moving rapidly from visionary concept to tangible possibility. In the Smart Urban eFly project, the transition was approached as a question of how this emerging form of aviation will be understood, experienced and ultimately adopted by users.

Electric aviation is still largely unknown

When starting our project and discussing electric aviation with decision makers, city planners, business travellers, travel professionals and other stakeholders, one challenge quickly became evident: many people simply did not have a clear understanding what electric aviation could be or how it differs from traditional flying.

For some, the concept remained vague and abstract. Others associated it primarily with futuristic, unmanned eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicles or air taxis. In particular, aircraft types such as electric short take-off and landing (eSTOL) planes seem to be unfamiliar.

This revealed a critical gap for us to solve, before we can start researching user-acceptance of electric aviation. We must first make the concept understandable by demonstrating the customer journey in a real travel situation and creating a prototype.

Making abstract ideas tangible through prototyping

Prototypes are not merely early versions of products, but representations that allow us to experience future interactions and communicate design concepts before they exist. Prototyping can be understood as the process of turning abstract ideas into concrete and experienceable representations of a future system. By doing so, prototypes support creativity and learning helping us to externalise ideas, test assumptions and explore alternative solutions. (Mackay & Beaudouin-Lafon 2023.) At the same time, prototypes function as tools for better communication and informed decision making (Lauff, Kotys-Schwartz & Rentschler 2018).

Using video as a prototyping tool

When creating protypes for services, experiences, social interactions and contexts become important aspects (Blomkvist & Holmlid 2011). In our effort, we decided to use video-based demos in our prototyping to capture the dynamic nature of customer journeys in ways that static models cannot.

By constructing detailed customer journeys and visualising them through a demo video, our project aimed to bridge the gap between unfamiliar technology and everyday experience. This approach allowed the users and other stakeholders to engage with electric aviation not as an abstract idea, but as a concrete travel scenario, one that could be explored, questioned and critically assessed despite not yet existing.

In doing so, we also wanted to test how a video of electric aviation in a familiar context might bring the solution closer to reality. Thus, we decided to create a demo route from Helsinki City Airfield to Iisalmi, which is a town over 400 kilometres from Helsinki with an already existing airfield. In the demo video, the airfield in Helsinki would represent the future of aviation built for ultra-short take-off and landing (eSTOL) aircraft on a roof of a tall building.

Prototyping with a real-world hybrid-electric aircraft

To make the demo more realistic, the project collaborated with Electra Aero, a company developing hybrid-electric eSTOL aircraft, including the two-seat EL2 already flying urban demonstration flights and the larger nine-passenger EL9 aircraft. These aircraft represent a different vision of electric aviation: not autonomous flying vehicles, but pilot-operated, fixed-wing aircraft capable of operating from extremely short runways, enabling new types of regional connectivity.

The EL9, which was chosen for the demo video, uses ‘blown lift’ technology and distributed electric propulsion enabling the aircraft to take off and land in as little as approximately 46 metres according to Electra Aero (2024). This allows the aircraft to connect locations that are currently not served by traditional aviation, while producing significantly lower noise and emissions than conventional aircraft. At the same time, it retains the familiarity and safety characteristics of a fixed-wing airplane, distinguishing it clearly from the helicopter-like or autonomous concepts.

Reimagining the customer journey

Building on the collaboration with Electra Aero, the project set out to prototype a future customer journey using the EL9 aircraft. The aim was to demonstrate how electric aviation might differ from conventional travel, not only in terms of technology, but in terms of the entire experience. This included rethinking departure points (such as small urban airfields), simplifying boarding processes, reducing travel time and minimising friction across the journey.

In the demo video the journey starts with easy access to Helsinki City Airfield, comparable to arriving at a train station or even closer to the experience of calling a taxi. Instead of long transfers to airports, complex terminal navigation and security queues, the traveller enters a compact urban airfield, situated on a rooftop within the city area. This immediately highlights one of the most radical shifts enabled by electric aviation which Electra Aero (2026) calls direct aviation, the relocation of air travel closer to where people actually live and work.

Boarding is portrayed as smooth, fast and intuitive. The process resembles taxi or train services more than traditional aviation. There are no long queues, no multiple checkpoints and no extended waiting times. This ‘low-friction onboarding’ addresses one of the major pain points identified in business travel, the inefficiency of airport processes.

Once onboard, the aircraft departs with minimal noise and disturbance, reflecting one of the defining characteristics of electric and hybrid-electric propulsion. Compared to conventional jets, the sound profile is significantly lower, making operations feasible even in dense urban environments.

The entire journey from arrival at the airfield to take-off takes only a fraction of the time required for conventional flights. As a result, the overall travel experience becomes faster, smoother and more predictable.

The value of using concrete prototypes

The demo video has been used to communicate the concept of electric aviation to stakeholders and to explore user acceptance in interviews. It has helped to illustrate how business travel could evolve by combining compact urban infrastructure, advanced aircraft such as the EL9 and a redesigned service model.

As the technology matures and infrastructure develops, such scenarios may move from demonstration to everyday practice, redefining what efficient and responsible business travel looks like in the future.

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