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

Collaborating with cross functional teams, I created customer centric experiences based on discovery research and usability tests.

At the Discovery stage, I facilitated Customer Interviews and Stakeholder Workshops to gather insights to better understand our customers. Product Surveys helped recruit ‘Customer Ambassadors’, a pool of participants for ongoing research.

We ran ‘Remote Customer Labs’ so we could learn quickly, update personas, and rapidly iterate designs. These ran at all hours with the participants globally distributed.

One ‘Remote Usability Test’ which I ran with Peach Air in Japan also needed an interpreter. It consisted of an interview mixed with concept visuals to draw out discussion, with a feedback survey at the end.

Results

“Conducted product surveys during conferences, which recruited CAE Ambassadors for ongoing research (50% of them being managers)”

“Ran design tests with Peach Air and a Japanese Interpreter and received insights into Rostering during Covid”

“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“

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.

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