I find it hard to believe this is anything more than a desperate attempt to add more fees and theoretically, more revenue.
The speed of random boarding versus other viable methods is not a new result: I first heard about it years ago and I'm pretty sure it was old then.
(I emphasise viable because I'm pretty sure nothing can beat a perfectly strict back-to-front, but there's no way you're going to get that to actually happen with real customers.)
My real question is how changing boarding order affects the volume of overhead bins used. They kept emphasising that in the article, but I don't know what spacetime warping they are using.
It could conceivably affect the way people stuff things into the overhead bins, so that baggage fits better, in some unconscious way.
But looking back at the history of the airlines and their increasing fees over the last decade or so doesn't make it seem so far fetched. It's no secret that airlines are looking to tack on fees in every nook and cranny possible to squeeze much needed money out of customers.
This could simply just be another nook, wrapped up in "research".