CAE Flight Pairing and Crew Roster Optimizer
Creating user centric SaaS software for Civil Flight Services
Project Overview
Designed for small to large Airlines, the CAE Optimizer creates efficient and automatic solutions for Flight Pairings and Crew Roster schedules, helping to reduce manual work and save time. The Primary goal was defined as the ability for a 'Crew Planner' to easily self-drive optimizations from configuration to the reviewing of results.
Co-Design Collaboration
I collaborate with cross functional teams to create customer centric experiences implemented in Discovery and Improvement Design Sprints.
At the Discovery stage, I facilitated Customer Interviews, Stakeholder Workshops, and Product Surveys to build insights into our Customers needs, pains and gains. Through the surveys I recruited Customer Ambassadors, a pool of participants for ongoing research.
I introduced ‘Remote Customer Labs’ with Stakeholders and Customers, so we could learn quickly, update personas, focus on enhancements and iterate designs. These ran at all hours with the participants globally distributed.
One example is a ‘Remote Design Test’ I ran with Peach Air in Japan, which consisted of an interview mixed with concept visuals to draw out discussion. Followed by a feedback survey at the end.
The UX Process
Discovery workshops helped ‘define’ our Customers Personas, Jobs to be Done, User Flows and Customer Journeys. Creating these UX artifacts as a team was important so we all understood what and who we were designing for.
Then in the last two stages, we ‘developed’ and ‘delivered’ a vision or minimum viable product which we tested in two rounds with customers before releasing a new product.
Finally, I created numerous UX Jira epics and tickets which were feasibility checked with developers. Then once in production I reviewed the front end execution before deployment.
1. Facilitated Discovery and Ideation Workshops
2. Defined the Customer Needs
3. Validated Concepts Remotely with Customers
4. Developed an Initial Vision
5. Delivered Hi-fidelity Figma Prototypes and Interaction Designs
Results
Project Value
- From usability test findings, implemented an easy way to onboard personas like Crew Controllers to an new optimization
- Implemented intuitive Gantt charts to be able to visually see solutions in an expected format by Crew Planners
- From Customer feedback, designed flows to be able manually create Pairings alongside automated solutions from within an interactive gantt
- Following Virgin Australia feedback, created the ability to be able to manually pre-assign special duties to Crew for training or V.I.P. purposes
- Product execution helped win new clients like Virgin Australia and Indigo in India
My Achievements
- Introduced new collaboration, customer engagement and UX methods to the team
- Facilitated remote workshops and Customer Interviews
- Established and help set up CAE’s first customer engagement with SWISS Air
- Captured feedback and validated designs in-person and remotely to prioritise design iterations
- Used UX best practises methods for visualisations, forms and hierarchy of information to assist a Crew Planner to self-drive an Optimization
- Ran design tests with Peach Air and a Japanese Interpreter and received insights into Rostering during Covid
- Conducted product surveys during conferences, which recruited CAE Ambassadors for ongoing research (50% of them being managers)
Skills
- Global UX role working remotely and in-person
- Cross functional team collaboration
- Customer Interviews, Research Techniques, Product Surveys
- Usability Design Tests with Customers and Stakeholders
- Monitoring Interaction Behaviours
- Workshop Facilitation, remote and in-person
- Persona creation, User Flows and Customer Journeys
- Ideation Workshops
- UI Designs, Prototypes and Design Systems
- Iterated Designs based from Stakeholder and Customer feedback
- Documented designs for collaboration handover
- Mentored UX Designers and ran Design Reviews
- Tested and Reviewed end product quality