One turnaround, one truth

Plug is an operational plugin displaying all the processes involved in the preparation of an aircraft for its next flight.

Challenge

Plug is an iOs app displaying data on the aircraft preparation for KLM staff.
It contains a timeline with all the processes (cleaning, catering, boarding, etc...), their status in real time and information on the passengers and baggage.

The product owner asked me to redesign it, in order to display a larger amount of data and have a clearer and more professional look.
A user researcher took charge the preliminary research, while I redesigned the app and conducted the usability testing.

Business goals & requirements

Increase adoption

Display more data

Have a clearer interface than the previous one

Fostering on-time performance

Reminding security & safety rulings

Technical constraints

Display the exact same information to all the users

Have simultaneous notifications

Show multiple interdependancies between the processes

iPad-mini limited size & unavailable vertical scroll

Analysis

Previous design

Problems identified

1. The process name is not always readable
2. It's difficult to link the time stamps to the corresponding processe
3. Scrolling is necessary to see all the information
4. The titles of the sections are not hierarchically organized
5. The rounded edges of the bars don't convey a feeling of professionalism

Insights from the UX researcher

The research conducted by my colleague highlighted that:

The process involves multiple teams with different goals

The staff needs to quickly see the processes and their status

The staff needs to see the interdependencies between processes

iPads are often at more than 50 cm from the user

Ideation

Solutions

To solve the problems highlighted by the research, I focused on specific areas:

1. Sidebar

🤔 Problem: for our employees it is crucial to see which tasks are in progress and upcoming, but with more data available, the number of processes had increased causing them to disappear from the main view.

💡 Solution: I organised the processes in a collapsible sidebar where current and upcoming ones are visible, while the completed ones are hidden.

Idea 2: dependancies

🤔 Problem: the interdependencies may involve up to 3 processes and have various combinations.

💡 Solution: together with the developers, we came up with the possibility of displaying the processes in a dynamic order.

Idea 3: notifications

🤔 Problem: on-time performance being a main KPI, employees need to access a maximum of information at a glance. Current notifications, displayed as alerts covering and blocking the screen were not optimal.

💡 Solution: I integrated the notifications to the dashboard, to have them visible while not hiding any crucial information.

Idea 4: accessibility

🤔 Problem: the data is hard to read when iPads are not held in hand

💡 Solution: I added icons for visibility and increased the font size.

TOWARDS THE MVP

Usability testing

After testing the mid-fi prototypes with employees from 3 different work-areas, I transformed the sidebar into a checklist and added icons to grab users attention on the status of the processes.

Defining the UI

With the validated interface in mind, I defined the style guide according to the design system. For the processes statuses, I chose the iconic KLM blue and the notification colors (green, orange and red).

Final product

Plug can now display all the processes involved in the preparation of the aircraft.
It shows real-time data and actionable information, to empower the employees in their decision-making.

Outcome

After implementation, the app was used on 88% of the KLM flights and was perceived by our users as being much clearer than the previous design (mean of 5.85/7 on a strongly disagree/agree 7 point likert scale).

Learnings

The app being very complex and technical, I had a lot of refinements with the developers and the information analyst to discuss all the possible cases and exceptions and come up together with ideas and solutions.

In order to make the developers understand all the different scenarios in my designs, I documented all the possible combinations of processes and statuses and the different kinds of dependencies and notifications.