Overview
The Opportunity
Boeing sought to redefine digital learning in their training facilities for maintenance technicians. With maintenance training being a critical component of the delivery of a new airplane, they needed a more personalized, adaptable, and portable training experience that could accelerate training time and replicate hands-on experience, while still being in the classroom setting.
The Hurdle
Boeing’s instructors were experts in their fields but recognized that lecture-based teaching wasn’t as engaging as it could be. Hands-on access to planes was costly and infrequent, creating a gap between learning and application. They wanted to improve accessibility and the teaching model but lacked a clear solution. Additionally, effective classroom elements relied on sets of wall mounted screens, making them difficult to adapt to a portable, single-screen format.
The Solution
Working together, we shifted their learning model from an instructor-driven lecture based approach, to a student paced “learn by doing” model in a portable, single screen, simulation experience. This approach increased student engagement, decrease costs to the company, created new revenue streams, and provide the same level of experience whether it was performed on-site in the manufacturer’s classroom, or in one of their buyer’s classrooms.
Details
Business Impact: Successfully launched internally and become a new line of revenue with Boeing’s customer base.
Project Length: 7 years
Team Size: 7
My Role: Design Director
My Contributions:
Product Design Management
Design Team Leadership
User Research
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Motion design
Stakeholder management
Quality Assurance
“How can we embed the expertise of the instructor into experience?”
Discover
Research
To better understand the problem space, we interviewed students and instructors to understand their goals, needs, and pain points in and around the classroom training experience. This involved understanding what the current classroom experience looked like (theoretical training) as well as what the experience of practical training “on the line” looked like.
From this information we generated User Stories to help inform product ideas.
Tasks Performed
Contextual inquiries
Experience mapping workshops with client
Student interviews
Experience Mapping
Experience Map artifacts by Clemente Miller
Classroom instructor Experience Maps
Student Behavioral Archetypes
Prototypes
After the Experience Mapping workshops, we had better insights on what the goals, needs, and pain points of the instructors and students were. These provided insight as we began to translate the analogue classroom experience into interactive prototypes
Concepts
From our research and working closely with instructors, we discovered there were multiple methods of teaching maintenance training in the classroom. These methods led to five different prototype concepts. Each of these concepts were fleshed out by the team into prototypes, from simple click-throughs to more complex builds that utilized manipulatable 3D assets on tablets.
Artifacts
Testing
From there we began to run tests with students and instructors to see if the sets of features within the many prototypes solved both the business problem and created a better user experience for the end user.
In addition to traditional testing methods, we also gathered feedback by running “science fairs” within the organization. These were effectively an Agile Demo Day open the larger organization where we could showcase progress and gather feedback. These have continued over the years and help foster change in the organization by bringing visibility of the products evolution and success to other teams who were less familiar with Agile development process.
Results
& Insights
Initial concepts tested well and led to much discussion about what was feasible to move forward with. As Local Aerospace’s digital transformation was in nascent stages, it became clear that while all the prototype ideas were useful, there was still a question about which would prove to be most useful to reduce practical training costs (expensive) and be the best replacement for student engagement and learning retention. Ultimately, the choice to move forward with Prototype 2 and Authoring tool won out while prototypes such as Prototype 3 are still being evaluated.
Design
Mood Boards
After testing results pointed towards a refined product definition, I worked up high level mood boards to aid the discussion for brand and feel.
Interaction Design
Another critical component of the experience required students to use analogue teaching materials as they progress through the digital content. To integrate this requirement into the experience, data input methods needed to be explored and tested within the evolving prototypes.
Style Guide & Design Kit
As a result of this conversation it became clear that there was an opportunity to break away from Local Aerospace’s traditional color palette and take a slightly different approach. Brighter color palette, line icons, and lots of breathing room around UI were part of what made the product feel different than anything that had come before it.
Build
From paper and pencil to digital experience
Fitting the entire classroom experience on one portable laptop was key to the products success. It also made for significant UX challenges.
Spatial awareness
Using 3D environements to train students allows for spatial awarness and component location to be “learned by doing”.
Deeper Engagmement
By interacting directly with the environment, students increase task comprehension and retain information better.
The future
Talking to customers…
Interviewed Aerospace training customers around the world.
Introduced "the difficult truths". Clients loved frank voice of customer.
This became "Aerospace Authoring Tool" two years later.
How might we get there…
A key piece of getting Boeing leadership buy in was generating a multi-year road map, complete with workstreams, actvities, deliverables and business impact.
