Schedule Management Tool
OVERVIEW
Worked in the Airline Solutions business unit at Sabre modernizing one of the top airline scheduling products worldwide. This product supports airlines effectively plan and execute within profitability margins and optimize their routes.
OPPORTUNITY
Network planners generally look for patterns to improve and optimize their schedules. The goal is to make it easier for the planners to distinguish these patterns and help them communicate the opportunities to the senior management at different airlines.
ACTION PLAN
Modernizing the interface. The capabilities where there, but the visualization wasn’t. The modernization of the interface was the first step in a marathon of tasks that needed to happen in order to have a complete and improve the user experience.
- Understand the Technology Stack
- Agile Operating Model
- Scalable options
- Deliver new style-guide to the teams
User Research is not an optional checkbox in the list of steps towards enhanced user experience. Is a mandatory task that doesn’t stop. One of the first research exercises we executed was a Design Thinking workshop in which we gathered 8 airlines from all over the world.
Methodology:
- Brainwriting
- Nice If / Awful If
- Affinity Diagram
- Sketching
- Heatmap Voting (Dot Voting)
The Design Thinking exercise generated more than 100 ideas to improve the product. The users provided feedback on a variety of ideas and we measured their feasibility in an internal exercise. We decided to tackle the feasible ideas via Rapid Iterative Testing.
Rapid Iterative Testing took place before the launch of the first release in March 2017. The current version of this product continue to being used by well known American and Global Airline carriers.
Over the course of 18 months, the team gathered more data than in the previous 5 years, and this data became key to continue developing modern business applications for airlines worldwide. Even though my leadership in the project ended, I’m glad to see that our work has been gathering positive feedback and the customers are demanding more designers to continue the work I started.