Creating a scalable aviation charter platform through product strategy, UX systems thinking, and a new design system
PROJECT RESULT
This is just to be used as guidance rather than set in stone.
Aerios is a commercial aviation platform used by aircraft carriers to manage the charter workflow from availability and quote creation through to bookings, documents, and invoices.
The carrier application had grown quickly in response to customer demand, but the user experience had become increasingly fragmented. Workflows were powerful, but inconsistent. Screens had been added quickly, patterns varied across the product, and complex commercial users needed a clearer way to move through quote, booking, and transaction workflows.
My role was to lead the redesign of the carrier application and establish a new design system that could support the next stage of product growth. This meant working across product strategy, customer discovery, requirements gathering, UX audit, interaction design, prototyping, design systems, user testing, and delivery alignment with engineering.
The goal was not just to make the product look better. It was to make Aerios easier to sell, easier to use, faster to build, and more scalable for enterprise aviation customers.
Senior Product Owner / Product Design Lead
I led the product and UX direction for the carrier application redesign, working across:
Roles
01 Product strategy
02 Requirements gathering
03 Customer discovery
04 UX audit
05 Information architecture
06 Interaction design
07 Design system strategy
08 Figma prototyping
09 AI-assisted design exploration
10 User testing
11 Heat map and behavioural analytics planning
12 Engineering handoff
13 Delivery prioritisation
Aerios had strong product-market pull but the carrier application had grown faster than the underlying UX system.
New customer requirements had been delivered quickly, but over time this created visible fragmentation across the interface. Different areas of the product used slightly different layouts, inconsistent form patterns, varied table behaviours, mixed terminology, and disconnected navigation models.
For a platform dealing with complex aviation workflows, this created several problems:
The central UX challenge was to transform Aerios from a collection of powerful workflow screens into a coherent commercial operating system for air charter teams.
Aerios operates in a high-value, time-sensitive aviation environment. Carrier users often need to produce accurate quotes quickly, manage aircraft availability, progress bookings, generate documents, and support operational handover.
The redesign, therefore, had to balance usability, delivery speed, commercial workflow accuracy, and future product extensibility.
In this context, UX quality is not cosmetic. It directly affects:
01 Quote turnaround time
02 User confidence
03 Operational accuracy
04 Customer responsiveness
05 Internal adoption
06 Commercial scalability
07 Enterprise readiness
The work was driven by a clear business question:
How do we redesign the carrier application so that Aerios can support more complex customers, deliver features faster, and provide a clearer end-to-end transaction workflow?
The discovery process combined customer calls, internal product reviews, stakeholder interviews, support feedback, and workflow analysis.
I worked with carrier customers and internal stakeholders to understand how different teams used the platform across the commercial lifecycle.
I carried out a full UX audit of the carrier application to identify inconsistency, friction, duplication, and scalability risks.
Miro
Figma
Dovetail
Intercom
Hotjar
Power BI
01 Navigation structure
02 Screen hierarchy
03 Table patterns
04 Form layouts
05 Modal behaviour
06 Status usage
07 Quote Builder interactions
08 Booking workflows
09 Settings architecture
10 Empty states
11 Error states
12 Button hierarchy
13 Typography
14 Iconography
15 Colour usage
16 Spacing
17 Component reuse
18 Accessibility risks
19 Developer handoff quality
Key UX issues identified
The redesign was framed around a strategic shift:
From a feature-led carrier tool to a scalable commercial workflow platform.
This meant the new UX had to support:
Faster quote creation
Clearer transaction progression
Better operational handover
Reusable patterns for future features
Configurable enterprise workflows
Stronger document and contract flows
Better visibility across teams
Reduced manual workarounds
More scalable engineering delivery
The product direction was organised around the full commercial lifecycle:
Request received
Quote created
Quote sent
Quote won/lost
Booking confirmed
Documents generated
Invoice created
Contract signed
Transaction completed
This became the foundation for the new information architecture and single transaction model.
A key part of the redesign was rethinking how users should navigate the carrier application.
The existing product had strong functional areas, but the relationships between them were not always clear. I proposed a clearer lifecycle model:
This approach reduced duplicated-feeling records and made each area of the product more purposeful.
The redesign required a new design system that could support Aerios' increasing product complexity.
The system was built around reusable foundations, components, and product patterns rather than isolated screens.
The design system had to serve multiple goals:
01 Improve visual consistency
02 Speed up design work
03 Reduce front-end ambiguity
04 Improve QA reliability
05 Make new features easier to deliver
06 Support future enterprise workflows
07 Create a stronger foundation for accessibility
08 Make the product feel more polished and credible for enterprise customers
UX Research
The first job was to reach out to users to understand what mattered most to them.
Exporting Data
Man Energy Solutions
“Data manipulation and exportation is important to us for capturing periods of time and internal circulation”
Storytelling
Caterpillar
“We use data for storytelling. Visualisation is very important to us as it creates a compelling story”
Understanding our Customers
Alfa Laval
“We want to understand who our best customers are, and also how that changes over the course of the year”
Comparing Time Periods
Kerger & Co.
“We see a lot of value in being able to compare months, quarters and years to identify trends in our performance.”
Performance Matters
Hamworthy
“Speed matters for us and so understanding our responsiveness and benchmarking it against our competitors is important.”
Break the Data Down
RS Components
“The data is more relevant when broken down by quote rate, number of quotes, and number of quotes per buyer.”
The foundation layer included:
The aim was to move away from ad hoc colour usage and toward meaningful product semantics.
Colour
A semantic colour system was created to support:
Colour 1
#3239FB
Colour 2
#E9F3FC
Colour 3
#ECEFF1
Colour 4
#F7F8FA
Colour 5
#FF6F00
Colour 6
#FFF1E6
Colour 7
#8F090B
Colour 8
#FEF3F3
Colour 9
#000000
Colour 10
#AAB6BE
Colour 11
#FFFFFF
Typography
Typography was standardised to improve readability and hierarchy across dense product screens.
Defined styles included:
Size
Line high
Letter spacing
Type
00
00%
-00
Page titles
00
00%
-00
Section headings
00
00%
-00
Table headers
00
00%
-00
Body copy
00
00%
-00
Field labels
00
00%
-00
Helper text
00
00%
-00
Captions
00
00%
-00
Error messaging
00
00%
-00
Metadata
00
00%
-00
Empty state copy
Spacing
A spacing system was introduced to improve rhythm across forms, tables, cards, modals, and dashboards.
This was particularly important because the carrier application contains dense operational information where spacing needs to support scanning without wasting space.
0
0.5
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
10
0rem
0.125rem
0.25rem
0.5rem
0.75rem
1rem
1.25rem
1.5rem
2rem
2.5rem
0px
2px
4px
8px
12px
16px
20px
24px
32px
40px
Layout
The system defined reusable layout patterns for:
Settings pages
Data tables
Detail pages
Summary headers
Modal workflows
Split layouts
Dashboard views
Quote Builder panels
Booking views
Related document sections
Interaction states
This was essential for a product dealing with complex workflows, provider integrations, formula overrides, and document states.
Component states were documented for:
01 Default
02 Hover
03 Focus
04 Active
05 Disabled
06 Loading
07 Error
08 Empty
09 Selected
10 Read-only
11 Overridden
12 Deleted
13 Stale data
14 Synced
15 Unsynced
The new component system included reusable patterns for:
Each component was designed with clear variants, consistent naming, and reusable states.
Button
Inputs
Select fields
Select fields
Date/time fields
Toggles
Checkboxes
Radio groups
Because Aerios is a workflow-heavy B2B product, the design system could not stop at basic components. It needed product-specific patterns that could be reused across complex features.
This pattern allowed the product to scale toward enterprise integrations while keeping the settings experience consistent.
Transaction summary pattern
A reusable transaction header showing:
Unique transaction identifier
Customer/requester
RouteCurrent lifecycle stage
Current document
Status
Assigned team/user
Last updated timestamp
Related documents
Quote builder line pattern
A reusable transaction header showing:
Line name
Formula value
Manual override
Source data
Calculation state
Edit actions
Included/excluded state
Audit context
Related documents pattern
A reusable transaction header showing:
Original request
Related quotes
Related bookings
Related invoices
Future contracts
Team/Profile selector pattern
A reusable transaction header showing:
Team assignment
Default team
Multi-team users
Organisation-level profile settings
Request-level team storage
Integration status pattern
A reusable transaction header showing:
DocuSign
Adobe Acrobat Sign
RDC Aviation
AIMS
PPS
Flight planning providers
Currency conversion providers
I created clickable prototypes in Figma to test core workflows before engineering delivery.
Prototype areas included:
01 Transaction summary page
02 Request-to-quote flow
03 Quote-to-booking progression
04 Related document navigation
05 Team/profile selection
06 Team settings management
07 Document generation from booking
08 Contract dispatch to DocuSign
09 Currency selection and conversion
10 Notification configuration
11 Quote line editing post-confirmation
12 Duplicate quote flow
13 Airport and en-route charge review flows
The prototypes were designed to answer practical workflow questions:
01 Can users understand where a transaction currently sits?
02 Can users find the latest document quickly?
03 Can users move between related records without confusion?
04 Can users select the correct team/profile at request creation?
05 Can users edit quote lines after confirmation without feeling like they are reopening the whole quote?
06 Can users understand which cost values are system-derived versus manually overridden?
07 Can users configure integrations without needing technical support?
The testing strategy combined moderated usability testing, stakeholder walkthroughs, prototype review sessions, and behavioural analytics planning.
Testing methods
Example test tasks
To make the redesign measurable, I defined a metrics framework across usability, efficiency, adoption, and delivery.
Tools could include Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, FullStory, or a similar analytics layer depending on implementation constraints.
Task success rate
Measured whether users could complete core workflows without assistance.
Target workflows:
Time on task
Measured whether redesigned workflows reduced the time required for high-frequency actions.
Key areas:
Error rate
Tracked where users made mistakes, abandoned steps, or selected the wrong record/status.
Example errors:
Click depth
Measured how many clicks were required to reach key areas.
Example:
First-click accuracy
Measured whether users clicked the expected area first when asked to complete a task.
This was particularly useful for testing:
System usability scale
Used as a high-level measure of perceived usability before and after redesign.
Target:
Customer effort score
Measured how easy users felt it was to complete core workflows.
Target areas:
Feature adoption
Measured whether redesigned workflows were actually used after release.
Target areas:
Design system adoption
Measured whether reusable components were being used consistently across new product work.
Example metrics:
Heat map and behavioural analytics
Planned heat map tracking to validate post-release behaviour across redesigned areas.
Tracked patterns:
The heat map strategy was designed around the highest-risk workflows.
Transaction summary page
Metrics to track:
Workflow efficiency
Questions to answer:
Booking view
Questions to answer:
Settings
Questions to answer:
A key part of my role was translating messy customer needs into deliverable product requirements.
I used a structured requirements process:
Gate 1
Focused on:
01 Change overview
02 Who the change is for
03 Why the change is desirable
04 User/business value
05 Problem framing
Gate 2
Focused on:
01 High-level specification points
02 Expected behaviours
03 Design requirements
04 Customer feedback
05 Risks and dependencies
06 Time estimates
07 Delivery considerations
"This app has totally helped me take charge of my budget! The tips and alerts keep me from overspending and help me save more every month."
This created clearer alignment between customer needs, product decisions, design exploration, and engineering implementation.
Examples of requirements shaped through this process included:
01 Configurable team profiles
02 Transaction summary page
04 Quote duplication
05 Editable quote lines post-confirmation
06 Document generation and DocuSign integration
07 Currency conversion
08 Notifications
09 RDC airport and en-route charge integration
10 AIMS operational/fleet integration
11 Request/quote/booking lifecycle navigation
Key design decisions
Move toward a single transaction model
Rather than treating Requests, Quotes, Bookings, Invoices, and Contracts as disconnected objects, the redesign introduced the concept of one commercial transaction with multiple related documents.
This improved:
Keep workflow tabs purposeful
Each tab was given a clearer job:
Requests: request-stage work
Quotes: active sales work
Bookings: operational work
Invoices: finance/admin work
Transactions: full lifecycle overview
Contracts: future legal/agreement work
Use design system patterns for scale
Rather than designing one-off screens, reusable patterns were created for settings, tables, modals, transaction headers, related documents, quote lines, and integration states.
Design for enterprise configuration
The product needed to support larger carrier organisations with different teams, quote templates, formulas, aircraft, base airports, document behaviours, and settings within one tenant.
Preserve flexibility in Quote Builder
Users needed control over quote lines, formulas, custom lines, overrides, and post-confirmation edits. The redesign supported this without making the workflow feel uncontrolled.
Before and after narrative
Before
After
The redesign created value across product, commercial, engineering, and customer success.
For customers
For product
For engineering
For the business
Because this redesign was tied to both product delivery and customer adoption, I defined a measurement plan across four levels.
Delivery efficiency
Metrics to track:
Workflow efficiency
Questions to answer:
User behaviour
Questions to answer:
Commercial outcomes
Questions to answer:
What I would show visually
Hero section
Problem section
Discovery section
Design system section
AI prototyping section
Testing section
Final solution section
Results section
Final case study summary
I led the redesign of the Aerios carrier application to transform a fast-growing aviation product into a more scalable, consistent, and enterprise-ready platform.
The work combined product strategy, customer discovery, UX audit, design system creation, AI-assisted rapid prototyping, user testing, and delivery alignment. The result was not just a cleaner interface, but a stronger product foundation for complex commercial workflows across requests, quotes, bookings, invoices, contracts, integrations, and team-based configuration.
By introducing a new design system and clearer transaction model, I helped Aerios move toward a product experience that was easier to use, faster to build, and better aligned to how aviation commercial teams actually work.
This project demonstrates my ability to operate at director level across product strategy, design systems, user research, complex B2B workflows, stakeholder alignment, and measurable business outcomes.
