Business and General Aviation
Flight planning, routing and monitoring for pilots and flight operators.
Overview
The Challenge
World Fuel Services (WFS) solves energy challenges for customers at more than 8,000 locations in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. The aviation side of the business was powered by legacy applications built on old technology, with no design input, and by different teams. This created a situation where pilots, flights dispatchers and support personnel were having a hard time navigating between different applications in the ecosystem to perform their day-to-day activities around trip planning and management. They were further slowed down by poor and inconsistent experiences across the various apps.
How might we design for a consistent, positive user experience that allows users to efficiently perform trip-related activities, while reducing operational and maintenance cost to the business?
What I did
As lead/sole designer on the project, I:
- Began by conducting interviews with key stakeholders and synthesizing their input into a Lean UX canvas. I shared the finished artefact with the team, so that everyone is aligned with our collective goals and desired outcomes.
- Gleaned insights from previous research studies, conducted supplementary interviews with users, and developed personas and journey maps, so that the team could feel the biggest user pain points that a viable solution needed to address.
- Prioritized features and mapped out the proposed experience based on research insights, considering business and technical constraints.
- Iteratively designed the interfaces of various Trips features, with functional prototypes to communicate design solutions.
Developing a shared understanding
The project to integrate various Trips products into the Business and General Aviation (BGA) platform was a large one that required input from various stakeholders, both from the business, customer support, product and engineering teams. As such, there were different levels of understanding about what the project entailed and a variety of suggested approaches, goals and outcomes.
As the lead designer on the team, I helped the team get on the same page by synthesizing all of the various stakeholder input into a Lean UX canvas.
Lean UX Canvas
Getting the users’ perspectives
Based on size of operations, there were two broad categories of customers who used WFS trips apps: Local/national Air Charter Services companies and Global/international Air Charter Services companies. For the first version of the product, the business prioritized meeting the needs of the Global/international Air Charter Services companies because these companies were more likely to purchase Trip Support packages, which was a major source of revenue for the business.
Relying on past research work done, and conducting a few supplementary interviews with in-house flight support team members, I developed personas, user journeys, and a prioritized set of user goals, so that the team could better understand our users and their pain points.
Primary User Persona
Primary User Journey
Prioritized user goals
Scoping the work
Led by the product manager, the team defined the first version (MVP) feature scope, based on the prioritized user goals.
Prioritized user goals
Mapping and auditing the current experience
There were four different apps available to users for trip planning and management: Online Flight Planning (OFP), Falcon, myWorld iPad and TripView. Of these, the TripView app was where majority of the prioritized user goals of the primary user persona for this project were met.
To identify gaps, usability issues and opportunities for improvement with the new design. I mapped out and audited the TripView user experience.
TripView current mapping
The audit exposed major usability issues around navigation and information architecture, and an opportunity to connect fuel purchases to the trip planning experience so that users didn’t need to use multiple apps to perform these related tasks.
Mapping the proposed experience
With a focus on ease of navigation and efficiency in completing the most important/frequent user tasks, I proceeded to map out the information architecture for the new design.
BGA Trips Information Architecture
Designing the interface
With the prioritized user goals and Information Architecture as an anchor, I proceeded to iteratively design the interfaces for MVP features, with feedback from flight support team members informing design decisions. Below I show the evolution of the Trips list view from the first to the final version.
Trips List View
The following prioritized user goals were addressed by the Trips list view:
- Easily view all of my active and upcoming trips.
- Know the status of my trips at any given time.
- Table is information dense and not easily scannable.
- Columns not arranged in order of importance from left to right.
- Knowing the status, which is a top level goal is given the same visual treatment as other elements of the table.
- Columns without data such as “Call Sign” and “Trip Owner” occupy valuable real estate.
Legacy design in TripView app
- Attempt to make the table more easily scannable.
- Attempt to arrange columns in order of importance from left to right.
- Knowing the status, which is a top level goal is given the same visual treatment as other elements of the table.
- Columns without data such as “Call Sign” and “Trip Owner” removed and replace with other valuable information.
BGA design (first version)
- Cards more easily scannable than table, also makes it clearer that each trip is a distinct “object” that could be interacted with.
- Related informational elements grouped together for easier comprehension.
- Status given different visual treatment to set it apart from other properties of a trip.
- Information arranged in order of importance from left to right.
BGA design (final version)
Putting it all together
Below is the end product showing some of the major features and the design decisions and tradeoffs that made them work.
Trips list view
This is the “landing page” of the Trips app. The goal is to allow users:
- Easily view all of their active and upcoming trips.
- Know the status of their trips at any given time.
- Cards more easily scannable than table, also makes it clearer that each trip is a distinct “object” that could be interacted with.
- Related informational elements grouped together for easier comprehension.
- Status given different visual treatment to set it apart from other properties of a trip.
- Information arranged in order of importance from left to right.
Trips list view
Trip details
Upon clicking on an individual Trip card, the card expands to provide more details about the trip. The goal is to:
- Allow users quickly look up information about an active or upcoming trip.
- Seamlessly purchase fuel for upcoming trips.
- Know the status of their trips at any given time.
Trip details
- Clearly shows the status of the different phases of Trip planning (services, regulatory, flight plan, Wix and airspace).
- Presents the different trip planning phases as hyperlinks, so users can easily navigate to each phase for more details.
- Includes a “Request Fuel Quote” button, so users can seamlessly purchase fuel for each induvidual trip leg.
Trip details
Trips map view
The maps view shows the trip route along a map. The goal is to:
- Allow users quickly look up information about an active or upcoming trip.
- The largest “real estate” given to the map to allow users see as much information as possible before panning or zooming.
- The largest “real estate” given to the map to allow users see as much information as possible before panning or zooming.
Trip details
Reach out if you want to create impactful experiences together.
EMAIL
kessientus@gmail.com