My Safety Application
My Safety App: Mobile Application
My Safety Application enables United Airlines employees to seamlessly submit incident reports from the convenience of their mobile devices. There are multiple types of reports one can submit, from fatigue reports to whether or not a passenger is CDC compliant.
United Airlines
2021
Project Type
Mobile Application
TEAM
1x Design Lead
1x UX Designer (me)
1x UX Researcher
4x Product Owners
1x Business Analyst
3x Developers
Responsibilities
Requirements Gathering
Stakeholder Workshops
Information Architecture
Experience Design
Concept Testing
Usability Testing
The Problem
Filling out incident reports is cumbersome, time-consuming and location dependent.
Screenshots of original reports
Employees submitted reports through a desktop website, but over 70% are on mobile.
Original report was difficult to read and navigate.
Employees must submit reports within 48 hours after an incident.
The Solution
How might we create a reporting experience that meets the needs of United’s workforce?
Move the report submission from desktop to mobile.
Implement a flexible framework that can scale to different report and user group types.
Process: Requirements Gathering
I led requirements gathering workshops with stakeholders to better understand the report submission process.
A heuristic analysis identified a poorly designed submission process, characterized by a lack of hierarchy, numerous questions, and a missing grid, leading to user frustration.
We conducted a task analysis to recognize painpoints and opportunities.
The initial user group was airport operations, a diverse group made up of gate agents, ramp technicians, and management employees.
Process: Initial designs
This was the first application to implement the new mobile design system.
We created low fidelity designs using the new design system, ORION.
We tested early to learn how the components might work together in this use case.
Through testing we were able to advance the form language within the system.
Process: Usability testing
There was a major gap between stakeholder predictions and user expectations
prototype
expectation
The first question in the flow, ‘Was there a flight involved?’ confused our users as the answer initially set them on different paths.
Users understood the question, but always expected to provide flight information regardless of if it was relevant to the incident or not.
We resolved to remove any extra questions, and removed the flight involvement step all together.
Process: Usability Testing - Flight Selection
We thought employees would want to view their schedule to select a flight related to the incident. We were wrong!
Many gate agents and ramp techs are often recruited to work flights last minute that were not on their original schedule. M&A employees don’t have flights on their schedules.
This idea could work for pilots and flight attendants as they have stable schedules.
PROCESS: USABILITY TESTING - TRACKING PROGRESS
The progress tracker from our design system tested poorly for this use case.
Slide from Usability Testing readout with project stakeholders.
The united design system uses a progress tracker for multi-step forms because it is a common pattern.
But it didn't work for our users given their smaller screens.
We implemented progress
screens instead.
Process: Pivot
Based on business needs during the pandemic, we pivoted the application to service flight attendants reporting first.
Results from product walkthrough sessions with stakeholders and subject matter experts
After product walkthrough sessions, we re-examined our architectural framework based on the insights we learned about the initial airport operations group combined with new learnings about the flight attendant flows.
Process: High fidelity designs
We designed an experience specifically catered to flight attendants. We created three different reports for them, all following the same framework.
A. We displayed their schedule to streamline flight selection
B. We simplified the flight cards to only show
necessary information
C. If the flight does not appear on their schedule, theres an option to manually enter the flight
D. Flight attendants can bypass this step if
the report happens to not be flight related
E. After a flight is selected, the flight attendant can add relevant secondary information (crew members)
Process: Interaction Design
Key features
Progressive Disclosure
Instead of overwhelming users with complex forms, we implemented progressive disclosure, revealing questions only when relevant.
Dictation
Empowered by native voice-to-text, flight attendants can now dictate reports, boosting efficiency while on the fly.
Review before submitting
In response to user feedback, we added an editable review section to provide a final chance for employees to polish their answers.
Outcomes
Once the MVP launched, there was positive feedback and a 102% increase in report submissions in the first week alone.
Feedback featured in United company-wide newsletter:
Lessons Learned
Our job as experience designers is to act as a liaison and advocate on behalf of the users to the stakeholders, because even if they are confident they know their users, they are not the ones using the products daily.
Certain features were deprioritized for the first release. Users’ complaints helped to build a use case for them to be re-prioritized in a future release.
I would have liked to add additional rounds of usability testing with
the new user groups to confirm the framework worked for them prior
to launch
NEXT STEPS
Post-production usability testing to identify and improve gaps
Improve accessibility of components