A B2B iPad application to deliver aviation weather data to commercial pilots. I led the Objective-C development as well as product and interaction design on this project.

The design concept

One of the key considerations when designing this product was that airlines are very resistant to changes in how they receive their data. For this reason I decided that version one of this application should digitise the printed briefings pilots were currently receiving. This may seems like an overly simplistic approach but it provided us an easy first step into using mobile delivery channels.

Using the paper based package as the “metaphor” for the app reduced the risk of the app being rejected by the users because it didn’t fit with their current working practices. The digital medium allowed us to implement several features that enhanced the experience beyond what a paper copy could provide. These include:

• on demand updating of data.
• colour imagery
• easier navigation

The finished product

The product works by scanning a QR code delivered to the pilots in their preflight briefing papers. The app requests the predefined custom weather briefing package from a web service running on the java based backend system. The data is returned in a json structure which the app loads into the view.

The side bar menu slides out and away. It provides options to refresh the current package or load a new package by scanning a QR code.

The sections of the package expand and contract to allow easy navigation of the content. We used logical grouping and ordering of data to make it easier for pilots to find the data relevant to them at any given point in time.

For example flight charts were grouped by type and flight level then ordered by time. This means that instead of leafing through pages of images pilots can go directly to the charts segment, find the chart they are interested in and flick though the group of images to see how it changes over time.

The application was successfully submitted to the apple B2B store and Initial client feedback was resoundingly positive.