Re-Designing:
Performance Database for
Cabin Crew Mentors
A design enhancement project for an existing database website at Cathay Pacific. Developed for the purpose of managing Cabin Crew performance data, its design is reportedly cumbersome for daily operations. To spearhead its improvement, my team and I were tasked with re-designing its core functions for a specific user group - our Cabin Crew mentors.
Project currently in-progress.
Objective and Purpose
Task Objective:
To enable Cabin Crew Mentors to efficiently execute daily tasks, such that they may take good care of their fellow crew members.
Operational Purpose:
Act as reference for potential design enhancements in the future for other features across the Admin Portal, focusing on other user groups.
My Role
Working along side our team’s executive and designer, I supported research planning, conducted data analysis, and facilitated workshop presentations. Moreover, when both team members left for another project(from ‘Visualize & Translate’ phase onwards), I substituted as temporary designer to craft and verify UI concepts.
Problem
This investigation was initiated when a multitude of users expressed frustration towards performing basic tasks with the Admin Portal. One such group, the Cabin Crew Mentors(Lead Reps.), was by far the most frequent to voice out. In response, we quickly donned our empathy goggles to look at the problem(s) from the user’s POV.
User Needs:
Sorting
The User
Cabin Crew Mentors(Lead Reps.)
The largest user group(60+), they are direct supervisors of Cathay’s Cabin Crews. Each Lead rep. taking 200-400 crews under their wing, they use the Admin Portal to manage, monitor and coach their fellow crews.
Categorising their own crews into specific groups for easy management and reference.
Performance Analysis
Analyse individual Crew Performance to pin-point strengths, weaknesses, or behavioural patterns.
1-on-1 Coaching
Conduct regular 1-on-1 coaching sessions to provide recognition and developmental feedback.
Research
To get a closer look at the underlying issues, we hosted several focus group sessions with 8-15 participants, deploying different research methods each time.
Evaluative
Group Q & A, Performance Testing(Prompts)
Prompts took longer to complete than expected due to prolonged loading when switching in and out of levels.
In contrast to completing a prompt, repeated examination of multiple crews becomes difficult as user may lose track of who’s profile they are viewing.
Insufficient context to support performance indicators for evaluating SES.
Some would rather screen-shot their crews’ various Crew Profile pages, then flip through them on their iPad to conduct coaching instead of using the website.
Generative
User Discussion, Idea Sketches
Strongly preferred seeing scores directly over charts - charts are not valuable, as most crew’s SES fluctuate at the decimal ranges.
Several ‘wishlist’ sketches involved displaying all of crew’s SES components, both long-term(Rolling) and short-term(Monthly) side by side each other.
Wishes to have more helpful metrics/UI to help them quickly identify crews with areas of concern/interest.
What may have been the cause?
To figure out the cause behind our user’s pain points, I examined the Admin Portal’s existing design, and isolated existing and missing features that correlated to our findings.
Site Map Analysis
The only entry point to each crew’s ‘Crew Profile’ is via the results from Search tab. Hence, with no pre-determined target in mind, no existing data is available to guide our Lead Reps. towards crews who require attention.
No ‘bridge’ to navigate across score types and SES components on level 2. Users must first return to level 1, make another selection, then proceed to level 2 again.
Home Page (Landing Page)
Progression chart of all HKG crews’ average SES is not helpful to our user
Entry point to existing ‘Crew Groups’ are made redundant by the ‘Crew Group Configuration’ tab, which contains more complete list of groups
Hence, is always skipped over by our user for all use cases
Crew Profile
Identifying Design Flaws
Each crew’s profile features basic information, Service Excellence Score(SES), and other occurrences such as disciplinary records, and awards, but not the details due to confidentiality.
View each SES component individually via tabs under ‘Rolling’(long-term) or ‘Monthly’(short term) score , then access level 2 ‘details’ page.
Search Tab
Searches for all existing Cathay Cabin Crews; includes various filters to narrow down results.
The only entry point to each crew’s ‘Crew Profile’
Current design serves its purpose well
Insight - However, Lead Reps. only search for crews who are under them most of the time.
Crew Profile lvl2: Component Details
Displays detailed breakdown of each SES component on this level.
User must return to the previous level to select and enter another component’s details page.
So… How May We?
Targeting the relevant features and functions, I crafted low-fidelity mock ups showcasing how we may overcome the identified pain points . They were subsequently presented to our users for further verification.
Home Page
‘My Crews’ Mode (Default)
New default home page, which provides a ‘Big Picture’ of respective Lead Rep.’s own crews. Displays collective average score as reference to gauge if each individual is performance level.
‘All Crews’ Mode
For the less frequent use case of searching for crews out side of one’s own responsible group. Follows current design and does not show a collective average score, as the purpose of tracking other crews are not usually score-related.
Considering how our users skip the ‘Home’ page and directly start from ‘Search’ tab for most use cases, my solution was to replace ‘Home’ with ‘Search’ altogether. Additionally, since Lead Reps. mostly evaluate their responsible crews’ performance, and search for other crews on rare occasions, I devised a ‘My Crews’ mode to cater to their main use cases, and a ‘All Crews’ mode when they need to search for other crews
Feedback:
All were in favor of replacing the old ‘Home’ page - but the concern is to ensure that search results columns and search filters are relevant to both modes. Seeing that our Lead Reps. emphasize on performance evaluation for their own crews and ad hoc tasks for other crews, I decided to give each mode different filters and table content.
Crew Profile - Basic Information
Collapsed State(Default):
Only displays basic identification information; profile picture size minimized.
Expanded State:
Displays crew’s other details such as contact, career path, induction class, etc.
To ensure the user can keep track of each crew’s identity while viewing their profile, I proposed that the ‘Crew Information’ card be changed to a fixed position, such that it remains visible even when scrolling. It will also be displayed across the Crew Profile’s level 1 and 2 pages.
For sufficient space to view other during navigation, the card will be displayed in a new ‘Collapsed’ state, where only basic identification information is displayed; for more details, the user may simply ‘Expand’ the card.
Feedback:
Lead Reps. responded positively to this design change, and especially agreed with the decision to keep crews’ identification information displayed while maneuvering throughout their profile.
Crew Profile - SES card
I ideated several iterations of placing all components along side each other, such that Lead Reps. could compare SES components to identify strengths and weaknesses.
Idea 1
Display all Rolling Score SES components on top and Monthly Score SES components below.
Idea 2
Building on Idea 1, but include different base ports average as context for viewer’s comparison.
Idea 3
Score type selectable via dropdown or tab, while summary of each SES component displayed side-by-side.
Feedback:
Surprisingly, the 3rd idea was chosen, despite the 1st being inspired by our participants’ sketches. It turns out displaying all components for both ‘Rolling’ and ‘Monthly’ scores together are visually cluttering, making it inefficient to ‘scan’ for areas of concern.
However, an area of improvement is to include more relevant context for each SES component’s score - for example, amount of responses received for Peer Score, or duties completed for Roster Completion, etc.
Crew Profile - Level 2 Navigation
By adding ‘bridges’ in the form of tabs to level 2 pages, our users can now navigate across different score type and SES components directly.
Feedback:
The Lead Reps. fully support the idea, but are curious about its effectiveness at improving operations efficiency, depending on the page’s loading time when switching tabs.
Refined Ideas:
After refining the ideas based on our user’s feedback, I visualised each page with the improved components in higher fidelity:
Home Page
Crew Profile
Crew Profile - Level 2
What I would do next:
Optimize new UI design
The next stage is to continue finalizing the UI. I plan to achieve this by crafting UI variations (e.g: using a toggle instead of radial button for ‘Search Mode’), then running tests such as A/B tests to determine ithe most fitting variation.
Conduct interviews with users from different age range, in order to gauge optimal functionality of basic elements such as font size, icons types, colors.
Measure Design Impacts:
Conduct another performance test with the new design, such that we may compare its result with the old to evaluate effectiveness.
Survey/interview users to find out if new features(e.g Home Page) are being utilized adequately.
Measure the time it takes for users to identify SES strengths and weaknesses using old and new design, then compare.