Designing Safer, Smarter Task Assignments in Aviation Maintenance
This new technician view displays workload, licensing, ATA experience, and job history — giving controllers the insight they need to assign the right person every time.
📅 | Timeline: 4 months (Design Phase)
🎨 Role:Lead Product Designer
👥 Team: 1 design intern, engineering, PM
From Gut Feeling to Risky Assignments
Before People Analytics, technician assignments relied on memory and guesswork. There was no way to verify qualifications, licenses, or current workload — leading to risky decisions and coordination delays.
Without technician profiles, maintenance managers relied on guesswork — leading to slow decisions, mismatches in expertise, and missed safety requirements.
From Legacy Lists to Smarter Assignments
Scaling trust, safety, and speed with redesigned technician profiles
🔴 Before: Legacy Member Directory
Static list with name, email, and phone
No search by skill, certification, or role
Only one role/column per row
Difficult for new controllers to assess suitability
🟢 After: Data-Rich Technician Profiles
Dynamic profiles with license, ATA history, and workload
Filter by certification, availability, and recent activity
Rich details support FAA safety standards
Clear qualifications support confident task matching
Redesigned technician profiles surface qualifications, experience patterns, and workload insights — enabling safer, faster assignments and reducing downtime across the fleet.
Redesigned technician profiles now surface license type, job history, and workload trends — empowering faster, safer task assignments while meeting FAA safety standards.
This design wasn't just a UI improvement — it was a foundational step in Beacon's platform strategy. By aligning with shared data models and future features like Connect Assignments, we built forward-compatible tools that scale across teams.
“I finally know who’s actually qualified.”— Maintenance Controller, field interview
✅ Availability Management Improvements →
Smarter Scheduling with Real-Time Availability
✅ Search & Filtering Enhancements →
Faster Decisions with Smarter Filtering
Designing Within Operational Limits
- Just like the Case Room MVP, we worked with legacy systems and tight timelines. We had:
- Fragmented technician records
- Complex permission structures
- Limited engineering availability
- A short 4-month window to design, validate, and prep for handoff
Discovery & Opportunity
Through interviews and platform audit, we uncovered critical gaps:
- No filters for license, certification, or ATA codes
- No work history or qualifications shown
- No guidance for junior controllers or contractors
- Like in the Case Room redesign, we mapped tasks, user pain points, and information gaps to guide our UI structure.
Onsite visit at a maintenance operations center — gathering context from frontline users about how assignments were made, and where existing tools fell short in supporting safe, confident decisions.
I usually just assign someone I know. There's no way to check who’s actually qualified.
Field Research at Republic Airways – Maintenance Control Room
I usually just assign someone I know. There's no way to check who’s actually qualified.
Surfacing the Right Info for Safer Assignments
We transformed basic technician cards into rich, contextual profiles. Each profile now includes:
- License & authority (FAA/ANAC)
- ATA code experience
- Workload visibility
- Assignment-ready summaries
This wireframe features a searchable job history with ATA repair codes, timelines, and case-level details by technician.
By visualizing work patterns, we reduced reliance on tribal knowledge and enabled data-driven decision-making.
This design was an early step toward Beacon’s North Star vision — building a Connect strategy that transforms historical data into proactive, system-wide insights.
Laying the Foundation for the North Star Vision
Redesigning Assignment Workflows: A System Aligned with People Analytics
The MVP “Manage Resources” modal prioritized quick technician notifications but lacked context and scalability. In the redesign, the new “People” view became a core part of the visibility strategy — working in tandem with the People Analytics feature to surface real-time availability, expertise, and location filters. Together, they enable safer, smarter task assignments across the Beacon platform.
The redesigned “People” view complements People Analytics by surfacing real-time availability and expertise — bringing visibility to assignments at scale.
Measurable Results
To evaluate the success of the People Analytics redesign, we tracked both operational efficiency and user sentiment. Quantitative metrics showed a 30% improvement in task assignment speed, with gains in task completion, reduced aircraft downtime, and better resource utilization.
On the qualitative side, users reported higher satisfaction, improved morale, and greater confidence in assignment decisions — validating the effectiveness of centralized technician profiles and real-time visibility.
Quantitative results showed a 30% improvement in task assignment efficiency, with gains across completion time, aircraft downtime, and resource utilization. The People Analytics redesign also contributed to a notable rise in user satisfaction and morale.
“I finally know who’s actually qualified.”
— Maintenance Controller, field interview
Leading Through Constraints, Mentoring Through Action
Paired with a design intern, created step-by-step onboarding & documentation
Directed design audits and QA for engineering handoff
Created core design system elements (status tags, layout structure)
Facilitated async feedback and developer alignment — a practice I brought from my Case Room QA loops
This project showed how thoughtful information architecture and system-level thinking could directly improve safety and operations. It paralleled my work on the Case Room, where surfacing just the right info at the right moment was the key to platform-wide adoption.
