Interaction Design / GE Aviation

At GE Aviation, I was the lead designer for one of the company’s largest internal desktop applications - Nonconformance Management System. This tool was used during the aircraft engine manufacturing process to record and troubleshoot any parts with a nonconformance. The tool was originally built in the early 2000’s and had not undergone any major updates since its original release. My team’s focus was on rebuilding this application from the ground up to streamline workflows, take advantage of more modern UX patterns, and use GE’s design system.

I worked on a product team with a product owner, technical product manager, and a team of 12 developers.

Due to the proprietary nature of this application I’m unable to share any visuals, but can share how I approached designing these highly complex features.

P R O C E S S

01 / Contextual Inquiry

Each new feature for this product required detailed research, mainly done through contextual inquiry. The users of this tool were highly technical engineers, so it was important to understand their workflows, pain points, and ideas in detail before starting designs. I worked with our UX Research team to create research plans, discussion guides, and recruit internal users. These contextual inquiry sessions were done in person at their work location when possible, or conducted over Skype if we were working with non-local engineers.

02 / Whiteboarding

Since this product was used in the very high risk process of aircraft engine manufacturing, the design process was extremely collaborative to ensure we were not missing any key requirements. When kicking off work on a new feature, I would run whiteboarding sessions with our technical product manager, development team, and subject matter experts to ensure we were aligned on initial design direction before jumping into detailed designs.

03 / Design Iteration

Once aligned on direction and requirements, I used Axure and Sketch to build out the workflows using GE’s design system. During this process, I had frequent reviews with our product managers and development team to ensure my designs were meeting all requirements and were technically feasible.

04 / Usability Testing

Once we had enough workflows built out to create a meaningful prototype, I would again engage the UX Research team to assist with a research plan and discussion guide. My role in this process was to provide a prototype, key tasks I wanted users to complete, and document expected behavior to consider each task a success. The UX Research team would moderate these interviews, while I assisted in note-taking and qualitative synthesis.

05 / Design Refinement

Due to how complex some of these workflows were, we would sometimes get new feedback during our usability tests that required us to make some adjustments and do additional rounds of testing. Once we got to a point where testing went well and we felt comfortable we had met all the requirements, I would refine the designs in Sketch, ensuring everything adhered to GE’s design system guidelines, and work with the development team on handoff.