Redesigning a $4.4 billion aviation education industry

Project Overview

Designing a solution to the 90% Drop Out Rate

Female student pilots have a 90% dropout rate. I interviewed 15 stakeholders to learn more about the user journey of this group and the pain points they face. Additionally, students who do not have any prior exposure to aviation are learning what they describe as a “new language” as they are learning new aviation terms at the same time as they are trying to consume new, complex aviation concepts. None of the competitors I looked into try to address this problem. You can read about the UX design process below. Or view prototype.

Roles: UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer | Duration: 12 weeks | Digital Tools: Figma, Miro, Illustrator

Expertise: User Interviews | Personas | Affinity Clustering | Wireframes | Prototypes | Usability Testing | UX/UI | Branding | User Testing

Design Criteria: Converging on an MVP

  • 🐥 Beginner-Friendly

    Approachable to people with no aviation knowledge.

    New students currently have a limited amount of approachable material readily available. Many competitors include advanced aviation jargon in their apps, which turns new students away.

  • 🍎 Bite-sized

    Education material must be easily digestible.

    Students are overwhelmed by massive amounts of complex information and currently follow a manual process to try to break down large blocks of complex information into bite-sized chunks

  • 📱 Less to carry

    Portable, easy to carry tool;

    Students currently rely on heavy text books and desire portable learning tools. The digital solution should be a mobile app or mobile-first desktop application

  • ⛰️ Goal-oriented

    Progress can be tracked.

    Stakeholders talked about the difficulty and importance of keeping their end goal in mind so that when things are challenging, they remember what they’re working towards

Finding a solution: Coming up with multiple concepts during an ideation phase

Navigation and flow: The key path scenario for this app is completing a single lesson and taking a related quiz

Wireframing: The key calls to action are launching the first lesson and completing a quiz on the lesson content.

Design Iteration

  • v1

    Early iteration of lesson selection screen for Private Pocket Pilot

  • v2

    2nd iteration of lesson selection screen for Private Pocket Pilot

  • v3

    3rd iteration of lesson selection screen for Private Pocket Pilot

  • v4

    Final iteration of lesson selection screen for Private Pocket Pilot

View Prototype

Design System

Usability Testing

During moderated user testing, I asked participants to complete the following tasks:

  • Identify the purpose of the lesson selection screen and the available actions

  • Find a lesson about aviation lingo

  • Identify available action on the video page

  • Find a 3min video to watch

  • Save this video for later, and locate the saved video.

Roadmap:

  • 💬 Phase 2: Enhanced social components

    • Comment on videos

    • Compare progress to peers

    • Interstitial screens letting you know how many users are study the same section as you

    • Peer to peer chatting

  • 🛤️ Phase 3: Increased Progress Tracking

    • Highlight progress towards multiple career paths for a pilot

    • Provides average time and cost estimates

    • Averages can be swapped out for custom values

  • 👩‍🏫 Phase 4: More Connection to Instructor

    • Video call with instructors

    • Live chat during “office hours”

    • Custom content uploaded by instructors

  • ▷ Phase 5: Mixed Media Experience

    • Additional resources, such as pdfs relating to videos

    • Short TikTok-length videos

    • Interactive, in-video quizzes with gamified rewards