Air Track at Alaska Airlines Group is an internal tool for airline operators to manage flights and aircraft across different stations. This tool is also meant to replace VisOps, a 27-year-old application.
In this case study, I’m not able to present any prototypes to the public due to my NDA. Sorry about this! But I’ll share my process and journey here. If you’d love to learn more about my work at Alaska Airlines, I’d love to schedule a call to talk about it.
Disclaimer: To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Alaska Airlines.
March 2021 - March 2022
Product Designer
2 Product Managers
1 SCRUM Master
2 Product Designers
13 Software Engineers
In quarterly satisfaction survey, the overall rating from our users has raised from 43% to 87% with features I worked on.
My user testings saves at least $100k for Alaska Airlines in the product development process.
The design work was 7 months behind the planned schedule. However, I’ve successfully caught up 13 months’ work after joining the team. Now the design is 6 months ahead of the planned schedule.
I work in a cross-functional team, which means I need to talk to people with different backgrounds day to day to ensure the success of my design work.
Since product teams in Alaska Airlines work in an Agile manner, there're changes every week to the priority of design. As a designer, I learned how to adapt to changes of priority quickly.
The tool is meant to replace another tool that’s developed 27 years ago. When working on the next generation of the tool, I learned to keep the core functionalities of the old tool but also optimize the experience for our users with modern technology. Something we need to consider includes accessibility, clarity, and responsiveness.
Renovate a 27-year-old airline operational & control tool to adapt to the new world with smart automation, more modern UI, and more user-friendly experience, to save time and management costs for airline operators and the company.
How did I do it? Please continue to read ⬇️.
Since I joined the team, I’ve been working on the North Star version of AOC. I do user research, design ideation, user testing, design critique, etc. to deliver desired product experiences for airline workers.
I’m partnering with PMs, the development team, SCRUM Master, the design team, and information architect. PMs are in charge of project planning and coordinating among different roles. SCRUM Master ensures we are all on track within our sprint. The design team provides feedback on my designs. I work with information architecture to ensure my work is in the right direction.
I present my work to stakeholders and leadership to report the progress of the projects and the overall product experience, as well as get feedback from them.
As a designer, I get the request from PMs. I need to conduct user research to get a general knowledge about the stories I'm assigned. I also document user jobs and user journeys.
I head down to brainstorm and ideate solutions for the stories by constructing information architecture and user flow and creating interaction design and user interface. In this process, I'd reach out to PMs, information architect, and users to ask about confusion and validate uncertainties to ensure I'm in the right direction.
With several rounds of ideation and prototyping, I'll conduct scenario-based user testing on our proposed draft designs to see if the design is successful and get feedback from users. I'll apply feedback from our users to ensure the design is desired and intuitive.
I invite designers to critique my design either by Figma or by having a meeting to discuss the design. Discussing with design folks allows my work to be aligned with design guidelines and be ready to present work to stakeholders.
After having solid design solutions, I present works to stakeholders, PMs, and leadership teams to see if there's any further feedback I need to apply.
Before handing off, I'll work with PMs to specify what's the criteria of acceptance of implementation. We use Figma to hand off design documents to developers. After developers finish the implementation, they will reach out to me, the designer, to see if the implemented work matches the design mockups and get approvals.
By the time I left, I've finished these projects...
Renovating a tool that people have used for 25-year-old product is not easy. Changing any features and flow that they like and convince them to believe the new project is even harder. I spent a lot of time learning about the business strategies, product invision, technical feasibility, and discussing with users to construct a promising future for the operational tool.