Airplane Tray Table Cover
Brand: Lusso Gear (Parent Company: Lyra Collective)
Role: Lead Design Engineer
Scope: End-to-end product development (concept ideation, design, prototyping, testing, DFM, supplier development, and validation testing)
Materials: Polyester, PVC, Elastane
Make flying with kids simple, safe, & fun!
Flying with young children is stressful — how do you keep your seats clean, items organized, and little ones entertained? This patented design for Lusso Gear solves all of these problems and makes traveling with children a breeze.
Problem Statement:
Lusso Gear’s hero product, their Kids Travel Tray, helps parents keep clean and their kids entertained on the road. Customers had attempted to take this product with them on airplanes, but feedback showed it was cumbersome to travel with and didn’t work quite right on an airplane. Lusso Gear’s brand manager approached me with this customer need that was currently unaddressed in the market — how can we help parents traveling with young children keep safe, organized and clean, and keep their kids entertained on an airplane?
The Solution: A Novel and Useful Travel Product
The Lusso Gear Kids Tray Table Cover is the result of a focused effort to solve unmet customer needs via novel industrial design. The core challenge was multifaceted: design a single product that functions as a sanitary surface, a storage organizer, and an entertainment booster, while fitting the full range of commercial airline tray tables and packing down to almost nothing.
Several key design characteristics emerged from the rigorous testing and development process. The prop-up tray is fully removable, which allows the tray table to latch closed with the cover installed. Because the sleeve remains on the tray table for the duration of use and covers it entirely, the design achieves maximum hygienic performance without any compromise. The entire assembly rolls into a compact cylinder, making it among the most packable products in its category.
Material selection was driven by the functional demands of each component. The prop-up tray is constructed from 210D polyester with foam reinforcements, providing the structural integrity needed to contain whatever gets thrown at it. The sleeve is a 95/5 polyester/spandex blend, selected for its stretch characteristics to accommodate the dimensional variation across tray tables. The media pocket uses clear PVC, chosen for durability and to keep contents visible at a glance.
Patent Protected
During this project, I obtained two utility patents (US 11,925,282 and US 12,279,708) which now comprise a robust patent family for Lusso Gear and their Airplane Tray Table Cover product line.
Furthermore, I helped Lusso Gear develop their intellectual property strategy and defense tactics. To date, we’ve had remarkable success defending Lusso’s products against knockoffs via the Amazon APEX program, Walmart.com IP reporting tools, and other means.
Research, Concepts, Prototyping & Testing
Prototyping involved over two dozen iterations, working through key variables: materials, design features, construction details, and fit mechanisms.
At the project’s onset, an extensive user research and concept generation exercise was conducted. As user behavior, customer needs, tray table characteristics, and existing solutions became understood, a winning concept emerged: a sanitary sleeve with a prop-up tray and storage pockets.
Testing focused on three major variables: user experience, feature function, and tray table fit. Early research defined dimensional targets across tray table sizes; I fabricated mock tray tables and we sourced an actual airplane seat to validate fit in-house.
Flight tests were conducted on multiple aircraft types & airlines to confirm real-world performance. This testing revealed issues with tray table closure while the cover was installed, prompting a redesign of the prop-up tray system.
The end result? A product that’s ridiculously easy to use and works on just about any airplane.
Multipurpose Fun
The prop-up tray can be used in three configurations — flat for drawing, reading, or writing, half propped for a balance of access and containment, or fully propped up for maximum containment.
It’s not just for kids…
Building off of the success of the kids tray table cover launch, we developed and launched an adult version. This version omits the prop-up tray on the topside and replaces the tablet viewing pocket with more utilitarian storage pockets. It’s got the same hygienic barrier and organization characteristics as the kids version, but adapted for the adults!
Some concepts for the adult version.