My Role: Lead UX Designer, UX advocate, Mentor
Client: Boeing Global Aerospace Industry Leaders
Users: Boeing Human Factors Engineers, Boeing Aircraft Engineers, and their Managers
Client’s Goals: Revolutionize aircraft design testing, reduce reliance on heavy simulator and operational pilot testing while fostering innovation.
Challenges: Managing scope creep in a novel initiative, clarifying UX expectations, and initially defining the user base.
Key Takeaways: Visualizing design significantly boosted leadership buy-in and revealed a scalable product opportunity for testing various operational aspects of aircraft design.
Participated in stakeholder workshops helping define the problem they were trying to solve.
Investigated initiator and end user needs, challenges, and resources for the new feature.
Collaborating with diverse team members to define the problems are users are facing and that aligns with business need to create the best product solutions possible
Determining key application features based on user needs and data source integration complexities.
Fine-tuning the initial designs into detailed, user-friendly interfaces that align with the product strategy and user feedback.
Met with various stakeholders and initiators of this project to validate our designs and get feedback we are headed in the right direction.
Fine-tuning the initial designs into detailed, user-friendly interfaces that align with the product strategy and user feedback.
Building and reviewing the feature developed and providing feedback to ensure the product is pixel perfect.
Boeing engineers urgently need a solution to validate aircraft design assumptions using operational and performance data, enhancing safety and efficiency in the process.
Attendees: Safety Data Analytics, Human Flight Deck Engineering and Global Aerospace Safety Initiative team members, as well some members from the team I belong to for our application; Performance and Training Advisor.
Convergence of Teams: The workshops brought together diverse Boeing teams to address the identified problem statement, with our team singled out for having UX expertise.
Navigating Uncertainty: The initial meeting lacked a clear direction, prompting my role as UX lead to introduce design thinking principles.
Defining the Path: To kickstart the process, we decided to clarify the problem statement and initiate user research.
Initiator Interviews: Our first step involved engaging with the business owners who initiated the project. These interviews aimed to unearth their objectives and challenges, guiding our solution-oriented approach.
End-User Insights: In parallel, we conducted interviews with end-users who would interact with the proposed solution. This allowed us to uncover existing workarounds and pain points related to making design assumptions for aircraft.
Holistic Foundation: This comprehensive approach laid the foundation for a user-centric solution, aligning with Boeing’s core objectives of enhancing safety and efficiency.
Initiator Engagement: Project initiators submitted use cases and completed forms outlining objectives.
Tailored Interviews: Custom interview scripts explored initiator goals for design analytics.
Affinity Mapping – Initiator Insights: Findings were organized, and assumptions validated.
End-User Validation: End-user interviews confirmed assumptions and assessed value.
Comprehensive Affinity Map: Insights from stakeholders and end-users were consolidated.
Key Insights Delivered: Research findings informed stakeholder decisions for a user-centric aircraft design solution.
Collaborative Ideation: Working with global aerospace safety leaders, we held multiple ideation sessions and lightning rounds, welcoming diverse voices.
Affinity Mapping: We organized these ideas using affinity mapping, creating a comprehensive pool of solutions.
Feature List: From these ideas, we built a feature list, identifying MVP priorities and future enhancements.
Effective Collaboration: Our close partnership with the Product Owner and Data Science Lead ensured swift issue resolution and feasibility assessment.
Sketching: I began with paper sketches to quickly brainstorm and iterate design ideas.
Digital Outlining in Figma: Transitioning to Figma, I translated the paper sketches into digital low-fi wireframes for precision.
Sketching: I began with paper sketches to quickly brainstorm and iterate design ideas.
Digital Outlining in Figma: Transitioning to Figma, I translated the paper sketches into digital low-fi wireframes for precision.
During a stakeholder review, we presented our low-fi wireframes for additional buy-in and validation, ensuring that our high-fi wireframes would closely align with stakeholder expectations and project objectives, streamlining the design process.
Leveraging Design System: We seamlessly transitioned to high-fi wireframes and interactive prototypes in Figma, leveraging our existing design system and established design patterns for efficiency and consistency.
Interactivity: The interactive prototypes served a dual purpose: demonstrating product functionality to the team and enabling usability testing, ensuring precision in our design and valuable insights for refinement.
Usability Testing Sessions: We conducted 3-4 usability testing sessions with our original user volunteers, refining our designs based on their feedback.
Key Learnings from Usability Testing: We learned that retaining technical language from airplane data is crucial for our engineer end users. Additionally, we improved the trends view by adding a CTA to make it easier to switch between different bar charts.
Functional Specifications: To aid our development team, particularly while working across time zones, we created detailed functional specifications. These documents clarified the information architecture and design functionality, ensuring seamless implementation and project success.
Seamless Development: Our developers utilized our design to bring the tool to life, ensuring a user-friendly experience.
Polishing the Design: Through pixel-perfect Design QA, we meticulously fine-tuned every detail. Though development is currently on hold, we’re eagerly enriching the tool with new features for future users to enjoy.