Partselerate
Streamlining parts ordering for planned and unplanned aircraft maintenance.
Client
United Airlines
Year
2023 - present
Role
UX / UI Design
In January 2023, my team was tasked with reimagining the way United Airlines handles the ordering and tracking of parts for aircraft maintenance. Aircraft controllers, responsible for sourcing and fulfilling these parts, faced numerous challenges in their daily tasks. These included manual and repetitive data entry, lack of visibility between systems, and the need to jump between multiple tools to complete a single order request. These issues often led to postponed services and delayed aircraft returns to service.
Challenge
Creating a unified solution that catered to four separate teams, each with its own unique processes for ordering parts. By engaging in thorough stakeholder interviews and user testing, we identified common pain points and requirements. This informed the development of a single, integrated tool that addressed the needs of all teams.
Solution
A new product that replaced over 20 products used across four teams into one single, cohesive tool. This new product reduced the steps needed to find and fulfill a part request from nine steps across multiple tools to just three steps, all within the new tool.
Discovery + User Research
Getting to know the users
Our user discovery phase involved stakeholder interviews, observational studies, and journey mapping. This approach allowed us to gain a deep understanding of the users' workflows, pain points, and specific requirements.
Key Insights:
- Manual Data Entry: Aircraft controllers spent a significant amount of time on repetitive data entry, leading to errors and inefficiencies.
- Lack of System Integration: The lack of visibility between systems forced users to check multiple platforms to see all available options, resulting in delays.
- Tool Switching: Controllers had to use several different tools to complete a single order request, which was time-consuming and frustrating.
Sketching it out
Based on our findings from the user discovery sessions, we iterated through three rounds of low-fidelity wireframes with stakeholders and product champions to find the right flow that would work for all four teams.
Execution
Making ordering parts is as easy 1, 2, 3!
Previously, aircraft controllers used a combination of 20 applications to complete a single request. With Partselerate, we reduced this complexity to just 1 application and 3 steps, significantly improving efficiency and user satisfaction.
Aircraft queue
The aircraft queue is a filterable list of all aircraft with scheduled and unscheduled maintenance events. This feature addresses the need for improved visibility and organization by allowing aircraft controllers to quickly locate and prioritize aircraft based on maintenance status. By filtering the queue, users can easily focus on specific aircraft or maintenance types, reducing the time spent searching through multiple systems and ensuring that no maintenance event is overlooked.
Kanban board
The aircraft kanban board provides an at-a-glance view of the status of all parts associated with the aircraft request log. This visual representation meets the user need for better status tracking and management. By seeing the progress of each part request on a single board, aircraft controllers can quickly identify issues and track the progress of each part. This reduces the need for constant switching between tools and systems to gather status updates.
Part panel
The part slideout panel is a one-stop shop for viewing all available sourcing options for a part, creating a stock transfer request, and tracking the part. This feature addresses several user needs. Users can see all sourcing options for a part in one place, eliminating the need to check multiple systems. The ability to create stock transfer requests directly from the panel simplifies the process, reducing the steps required and minimizing potential errors. Users can track the part's status without leaving the panel, providing a seamless experience and ensuring that they are always informed about the part's location and availability.
