Solving complex industry problems blind
Airlines needed a modern way to manage corporate travel contracts and analyze performance data. The existing industry solutions were outdated, causing significant pain for both airlines and their corporate clients.
Unique Constraint
For legal reasons, we couldn't view any existing software solutions in the market. We had to learn the industry from scratch through stakeholder interviews and abstract the workflows ourselves.
Workshop-driven knowledge extraction
We started by abstracting industry knowledge from the client. By learning how the system works today, we constructed a high-level workflow map to visualize the systems at play. From there, we distilled smaller pieces of the workflow and identified key personas.
High-level system map showing the complex multi-party workflow
Pain points identified
Workshop session capturing stakeholder pain points and requirements
Key Findings
- Data lag issues: Impossible to see timely insights for corporation performance due to data lags of several months
- Permission complexity: Cumbersome process around data permissions—needed a cleaner and faster way to access travel data
- Limited self-service: Lack of control over administrative tasks—unable to manage users or data without other entities intervening
- Workaround culture: Limitations of current solutions spurred complex workarounds; complicated spreadsheets needed for analysis
- No source of truth: Collaboration on corporation contracts messy and disorganized
Validating concepts with end users
While we couldn't observe airlines using their current solutions for legal reasons, we did have access to end users for concept validation. Depending on the need, research took several forms: guided interviews on specific topics, hypothetical mockups to test mental models, and InVision prototypes for end-to-end flow validation.
Speed of insight as the north star
Our ultimate UI goals boiled down to speed of insight. We aimed to create a modern visual design that was clean and easy to read. We focused on creating dashboards that summarized the most important information, intended as jumping-off points for deeper analysis.
Main dashboard with key performance metrics
Corporate contract details and tracking
Corporate client overview
Detailed analytics for travel class performance
Building trust and driving revenue
Results
- Client trust: Grew exponentially through the engagement. Initially the client preferred to be the face of the project, but we earned trust to lead discovery sessions and demo directly to airlines.
- Design influence: UX/UI work was well received, with components and patterns poised to inform the client's overall visual brand and style guide.
- Business impact: One of my employer's highest grossing projects, expected to bring sustained revenue for the foreseeable future.
What I learned
This project taught me how to rapidly build domain expertise in a complex industry. Without access to existing solutions, we had to rely entirely on stakeholder knowledge and first-principles thinking to design effective workflows.
I also learned the value of earning trust incrementally. By consistently delivering quality work and demonstrating competence, we went from being behind-the-scenes contributors to trusted partners leading client-facing sessions.