CV on Google Drive

Product

Plane Maker

Project

Bringing a Tool Back to the Future

Summary

This is the tale of how I had the privilege of helping with redesigning a new Plane Maker. It covers the entire process and design steps I made throughout the 6 months of development I did.

Roles

UX Designer
Visual Designer

The Start of Something New

Plane Maker is a  virtual aircraft design & development tool for X-Plane developed in 1995 by Laminar Research without many UX/UI improvements due to not having a dedicated UI/UX designer. This left many users to adapt to the workflow established by one person that worked only for that person.

After discussions with users, it was clear that the software’s workflow, information structure, interaction, and general experience were very confusing and simply not working for them. This led to many forgetting where things were or even releasing incomplete products without knowing cause the system never told them.

 

Scoping the Scope

Through surveys, I discovered that many users were adults (20-64). Out of which, more than 40% had either flying or aircraft design experience. We decided it was best to focus on those core users who had experience as that was more who this was targeted for by the client. 

With that, I was tasked to R&D of an interactive prototype in 6 months that would showcase the planned changes combined with the challenge of doing everything online while keeping everything a secret from the large community. The client was really helpful since he provided me with a group of testers.

 

Therapy Sessions with Users

Given that I was only presented with a select few people that used Plane Maker 24/5, I wanted to confirm further my suspicions of the problem with the rest of the community. Through user interviews, forum surveys, and discussions with my local UX designer, it became clear that the lack of consideration of the user within the UX design process was the core problem, along with many usability issues. So, we decided to involve the user more in the process and bring Plane Maker back to the future.

I like understanding my users in a broader context with the help of personas. This combined with a mapped out process of how users used the tool and actionable problem statements, helped me develop a specific task that users could do both with the prototype and the old tool.

To the Drawing Board

Thanks to my small group of designers, and one LR employee, I did 3 brainstorm sessions to find 3 different ideas that all solved the same problem. With Pugh’s Matrix’s help and our democratic powers to vote, we managed to find our direction and idea.

Before we got our pencils sharpened, though, the tool’s foundation (IA) still needed to be redone, ideally with card sorting. But with limited users, you get limited answers (only 3 responses). So, I opted to base the IA on a known aircraft design process, which the tool already partially had.

Once that was over, I got to scribbling all kinds of layouts and style guides with it to be consistent. And after a talk with my client, we decided on a final design and upgraded to using a studio pen with the end goal of using Figma and colors!

The Fun, the Obstacles and the Truth

Using Skype, OBS, and Figma’s Previewer to test everything, I grabbed previous testers who had done a task with the old version of the tool and made them do the same task but with my prototype. 

Given the tool’s size, I placed all my efforts on one task that had a set of complex elements that users needed to interact with. So I separated them into little prototypes with challenges to test timing and usability.

Through rapid testing, I discovered that some struggled with the terms used in Plane Maker. To remedy this, I showed participants pictures/videos or explained what it was, which lead me to add context tooltips to the prototype.

+97%

Satisfaction

😍

+73%

Faster

💨

+84%

Completed Tasks

✅

The Finale

Using remote usability tests on the final prototype, we got a 97% satisfaction rate over the previous product, indicating that the prototype and changes made were an improvement in the overall experience. But there was still room for more improvements.

Learning Moment

The importance of maintaining an active and involved testing community can make a big difference in your design and development process. Besides, focusing on one aspect is much easier and helpful than trying to please everyone.

Credits

Design

Edwin Yanarico

Team

Laminar Research

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