CrewPad is a mobile training application from CAE Pelesys for the aviation industry. It allows airlines to distribute training materials to flight attendants, pilots, and other personnel, which can be accessed on iPads, PCs, or Macs. The app works both online and offline, making it convenient for users to complete their training anywhere.
Working with a junior designer under my mentorship, I oversaw the full revamp of the legacy system.
Goals
Revamp old app and add requested features
Implement new design system on the app
Introduce and guide intern to our design process
Results
Reduced monthly customer complaints by 60% after 1st month
Consistent design elements with most of the company’s products
Faster design and development cycles
New company and new challenges
After working at Pelesys for 2 years, the company has been bought by CAE, which is one of the largest aviation training companies in the world. They wanted to cover the whole pilot journey, from schooling to retirement. Pelesys was acquired due to its significant market presence, with over 25% of global airlines relying on our products for their online training requirements.
With the new company, we had to redesign the mobile app to fit their new design and development standards. Around this time, we also hired a new co-op student, so our design process needed to be reexamined. In addition to these changes, our sales and support teams established a goal to increase mobile usage while reducing usability issues.
CrewPad legacy application
Before I joined the team, the application has been around for more than 3 years. While I made a few minor UI tweaks in the past, this was my first time tackling a full-scale redesign.
Kickoff Meetings
To align everyone's objectives, we conducted several meetings with our current and new management. We listened to all their expectations for the product and prioritized 3 main goals.
1. Customers should be able to complete their usual tasks. We'll have to make sure that the application is backward compatible with our other products.
2. Improve the experience, while adding new features. We'll conduct usability testing, and measure customer satisfaction through monthly reports.
3. Make sure that the design fits into CAE's design system. We'll also report to their design team throughout the whole process.
Gathering Feedback
Working with the junior designer, we conducted several user interviews from different airlines regarding them and their learning experience with our products. I had to remind myself about the goals set by our management.
Using MS Teams to chat with pilots
These were the most common concerns from our participants:
UI "feels" outdated and slow.
Navigation is confusing when locating lessons.
UI feedback is not noticeable regarding lesson progress.
"I can't delete specific lessons in my iPad'"
"I have the required certificate to take a course, but I can't upload it"
Missing help section for new users.
User Personas
Working with CAE's design team provided the notable benefit of accessing their thorough research. When we merged our recent findings with their established insights, we were able to refine the proto-personas and user journey.
Relevant insights from personas and journeys to our product
Since new recruits are still adapting to their tight schedule, they want to see important lessons and reduce unneccesary clutter in their app.
Veterans already know what they want, but they are less receptive to using apps, especially the very experienced users.
Users expect their app information to be up-to-date at all times.
Pilots don't feel adequately prepared for their upcoming classroom sessions.
Mapping assumptions
We addressed our large backlog of customer feature requests during discovery. We documented all assumptions from our support portal in a shared word document, then spoke directly with customers to better understand their actual needs.
Heuristic analysis
To verify customer concerns, I asked our junior designer to conduct a usability analysis of the current app. Several of her findings validate the feedback we've been receiving from customers.
Site Map
To guarantee that engineers can implement our designs on schedule, our product team reviewed a new sitemap that could potentially impact the app's current architecture. Some of the complex features, such as email and in-app notifications, versioning, calendar, and career planning were pushed to a future roadmap.
Sketching ideas
The junior designer and I worked together on multiple sketches for the new app design. I reminded the team about all the key insights we collected during the discovery phase.
Design System
Using CAE's new Cobalt Design System, I took primary responsibility for adapting designs for the main feature layouts, while the junior designer refined details in smaller sections.
Future and thoughts
We tackled multiple user pain points by implementing a more readable UI with clear lesson progress indicators, enhancing the download page with advanced editing features, creating a dedicated certificates section for document uploads, and developing a help section with search functionality. I suspect CAE's design leadership will eventually phase out CrewPad in favor of a more advanced learning application from their other divisions.
As my first experience leading a complete product redesign while simultaneously serving as a design mentor, I needed to carefully balance my time between maintaining our high quality standards and creating space for junior designers to grow and innovate.
