The challenge
Ground teams reconcile timing, service readiness, and blockers while departures remain time-critical.
01 / HERO & PRODUCT SHOWCASE / AMERICAN AIRLINES / GROUND OPERATIONS
ONE RAMP.
A SHARED VIEW.
GET / Next Gen
Connecting gate schedules, aircraft context, and turnaround readiness so ground-operations teams can see risk and coordinate the next action.
ROLE / LEAD UX DESIGNERPLATFORM / DESKTOP OPERATIONSFOCUS / TURNAROUND COORDINATION
02 / EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A shared picture, from station to turn.
THE PROJECT IN 30 SECONDS
- Industry
- Aviation / enterprise
- Role
- Lead UX Designer
- Platform
- Desktop operations
- Focus
- Turnaround coordination
The approach
Connect temporal scheduling, spatial context, and flight-level detail in one operational workspace.
The impact
A documented interface and coordination direction, with a measurement framework. Measured turnaround improvement is not established by the supplied materials.
03 / PROBLEM & OPPORTUNITY
A turnaround is a coordination problem.
A gate coordinator needs to understand concurrent flights, service progress, and emerging blockers while working with ramp teams, the flight deck, and station leadership. A schedule alone explains timing; it does not explain every dependency behind a departure.
Make risk visible
Separate station-wide health from flight-specific exceptions so a coordinator can scan, prioritize, and then inspect.
Connect time and place
Bring gate occupancy and spatial aircraft context together without losing the selected flight or its turnaround details.
Coordinate in context
Keep service readiness, operational events, and the flight-deck conversation connected to the turn they affect.
04 / DISCOVERY & INSIGHTS
Three operational needs shape the design.
The workflow and interface materials reveal three design dependencies. These observations come from the supplied artifacts; interview quotations and usability-test results are not included.
Concurrent turns overlap
Insight: Timing needs a shared reference.
Design implication: Align gate lanes on one time axis.
Services progress independently
Insight: One status cannot explain overall readiness.
Design implication: Keep bags, crew, cabin, fueling, and doors distinct.
Blockers cross teams
Insight: An alert needs an owner, estimate, and confirmation.
Design implication: Connect exception diagnosis to the flight-deck exchange.
Explore the people and information architecture
The operating model connects gate coordinators, ramp teams, the flight deck, and station leadership. The information architecture separates a persistent station shell from workspace views, flight context, filters, and coordination tools.
05 / STRATEGY & DESIGN DECISIONS
Different lenses. One coordinated decision.
Connect time and place
- Tension
- Timing and aircraft location answer different operational questions.
- Options & constraints
- A timeline alone omits spatial context; a spatial view alone omits the schedule.
- Design direction
- Pair Gantt and Tower View with a shared selected-flight context.
- Trade-off
- The relationship is clearer, but synchronized selection adds implementation and testing requirements.
Keep service readiness distinct
- Tension
- Fast station scanning competes with detailed turn diagnosis.
- Options & constraints
- An all-detail dashboard competes for attention; one readiness score hides dependencies.
- Design direction
- Layer station health, exception filters, selection, and a service-specific checklist.
- Trade-off
- Monitoring stays scannable, while diagnosis requires a focused selection.
Follow the dependency
- Tension
- A delay label does not explain the owner, estimate, or next coordination step.
- Options & constraints
- Isolated alerts provide less context than a flight-linked coordination path.
- Design direction
- Connect blocker diagnosis to estimate sharing and confirmation.
- Trade-off
- Richer context requires more state management. The supplied diagrams describe intended behavior.
06 / ITERATIONS & VALIDATION
Make the intended states testable.
The available artifacts document visual states and intended coordination flows, rather than a dated iteration history or completed usability study. A verified legacy comparison and before-and-after test results have not been supplied.
Review the states
Inspect selected-flight identity, service readiness, and blocker ownership across views.
Test the tasks
Evaluate priority identification, exception diagnosis, and estimate sharing with representative coordinators.
Establish a baseline
Measure task times and errors before attributing operational improvements to the redesign.
Inspect the proposed screen states
07 / FINAL EXPERIENCE
Scan the station. Resolve the turn.
Situational awareness
Station health and complementary time and spatial views.
Focused diagnosis
Exception filters and service-specific selected-flight detail.
Coordination
Flight-linked dependencies, estimates, and follow-up.
PRODUCT CAPABILITIES / INTERFACE STUDIES
From station scale
to a single turn.
Two ways to understand the ramp
The gate timeline answers what happens when; Tower View answers what is happening where. Both retain the same selected-flight context.
1 / 8VIEW FULL SIZE
Explore coordination workflows
The primary workflow moves from station orientation to a focused flight and back to monitoring. Exceptions require more than a single status: a de-icing queue, a passenger blocker, and a delay can affect the same turn at once.
Follow the dependency, not just the alert.
The de-icing scenario makes the coordination need concrete: inspect the turn, check dependencies, obtain an estimate, share it with the flight deck, and revise the shared state when conditions change. The 12-minute estimate in the diagram is a scenario value.
Cross-view filtering and coordination transitions are intended behavior. Tower View positions and gate geometry are illustrative.
08 / OUTCOMES & IMPACT
Evaluate the work behind the dashboard.
Less context reconstruction
Risk, dependencies, and next actions remain connected. Task efficiency has not been measured in the available materials.
Turnaround coordination
Evaluate blocker resolution and tight-turn recovery against an operational baseline. No causal turnaround reduction is claimed.
A coherent operational model
Eight annotated interface studies with architecture, workflow, state, and measurement diagrams.
View the measurement framework
The design direction is a shared operational view that helps teams identify risk, understand dependencies, coordinate in context, and confirm an updated state. The supplied outcome framework defines how to evaluate that direction; it does not report measured results.
The central design decision
Keep the broad operational picture and the actionable detail connected. Gantt explains when, Tower View explains where, and the selected-flight context explains what needs attention next.
09 / REFLECTION & NEXT STEPS
Keep breadth and actionable detail connected.
Gantt explains when, Tower View explains where, and selected-flight context explains what needs attention. The design judgment is preserving those relationships without forcing every detail into the monitoring view.
Next, validate station scanning and exception resolution with coordinators, then use observed task performance to refine density, status language, and cross-view behavior.