The art of differentiation

I was reading about Delta Airlines plans to introduce Wi-Fi access on all internal US flights by the middle of 2009. This really interested me as I had come across an article a few months ago on a business travel site about how Wi-Fi would be the next big differentiator between airlines.

When I first read about this I was unsure about how this would work as a differentiator. I was looking at it as a purely functional feature; these are often easy to copy and as a result don’t remain differentiators for long (in fact the same article containing Delta’s announcement mentioned that a number of other airlines have announced similar plans).

But on further thought, from an emotional design point of view, Wi-Fi is an interesting addition to the in-flight service. Reading comments posted on the web about the accessibility of Wi-Fi during travel showed me that it’s an emotive subject. The language used includes many emotional terms such as trapped, bored and distressed. There are references to feelings of safety (a big emotive subject!) and gratitude with people expressing that Wi-Fi access will increase their feelings of comfort and peace-of-mind.

So is Wi-Fi just a new functional feature, readily copied, destined to be standard in a few years or could it be the starting point of a new emotional design brief for a service? I think it would be interesting to do a service re-design that focused on the growing perceived need for the type of connectivity that Wi-Fi provides and the implications of its availability. Potentially one airline could become the carrier synonymous with “outside world connectivity” or “complete productivity” – a differentiation which would remain long after Wi-Fi becomes standard.