Federal Aviation Administration

Designing a Decision-Support Tool

Role: Lead UX Designer
Team: 1 designer, 1 engineer, 1 project lead
Project Type: 4 week RFP
Impact: Headlined competitive proposal, Unified decision-making
Tools: Mural, Figma, Figma Make, Claude, Jira, Monday

Due to disconnected systems, the FAA needed a digital command center that provided a unified view of operations, program health, KPIs, and risk. Preface: This is not a working dashboard, but rather a static proof-of-capability graphic that had to convince evaluators as a view-only screenshot, depicting the interactive system the team would build if the contract is won.

As this project was completed for a government client, I'm not able to share all of the original work publicly. Some of the visuals shown here have been reworked or recreated to demonstrate my process without disclosing confidential materials.

problem

No Single Source of Truth

FAA teams cross-checked 5 different systems to judge program health. Nobody saw risk early enough to act on it, and each report meant pulling data by hand. Even beyond cost and time, late risk signals affect the safety of flyers.

It could take 3–4 hours to pull data from different systems into a status report.

diagram of 5 different systems connected with ? in the middle

week 1 - exploration

Research Under Red Tape

With no login access to the FAA's platforms, every finding came from primary/secondary research instead of hands-on exploration (interviews, personas, surveys tracking satisfaction/effort/task completion). I wanted to learn what data people actually look at, and which decisions it drives.

The 3–4 hour status report was an opportunity for AI assistance. With access to operations data, a chatbot could draft the report.

personas

survey results

Core needs:

Centralized visibility

Faster decision-making

Actionable insights

Centralized visibility
Faster decision-making
Actionable insights

week 2 - rapid prototyping

Consistent Visual Pattern

From low-fidelity mockups in Mural/Claude to high-fidelity prototypes in Figma (Make), I focused on visual cues:

F/Z eye-sweep pattern: sweep left to right across the top, drop down for a second, shorter sweep, then scan down the left edge. This meant summary metrics top-left, granular detail down and to the right.
Dark Design system: built from scratch, drawing on other IBM projects with shared themes of dark mode, data-heavy screens, and federal high-stakes missions. Focused on high-contrast color pairs, button sizing, navigation layout, and information density.

hover for
more...

weeks 3–4 - testing & iterating

Comprehension Upon First Glance

The real audience wasn't the ATC operator who'd use this daily — it was the executives and evaluators skimming the proposal for a few minutes.

Test	Question it answered
Five-second test	After five seconds, can reviewers pinpoint the key metrics? "Tell me what you see."
Cold-read comprehension	Can someone with no FAA background explain what the system is for?
A/B layouts	What feels too sparse, and what feels too crammed, on first look?

need 1

Centralized Visibility

Application Launcher

Every user lands here first. Attention elements anchor the top-left, with Announcements and Upcoming dates completing that row. Dashboards and Applications form a shorter second sweep below, so each user can click into specific tools they need. A persistent top nav carries the ATOM assistant, notifications, and inbox.

Executive Status

Executives want a fast, high-level read on KPIs to judge if the program is on track. Program status anchors the top-left, with schedule and cost variance completing that row; a second sweep of KPI tiles lets them confirm which metric is driving the headline before they scroll to the earned-value trend and health breakdown lower on the page.

need 2

Faster Decision-Making

Project Management

Program Managers wanted project health detail and recommended actions to improve their score. The facility map anchors the top-left ("where's the problem"), with the program health trend showing historical data. Project scores and recommended actions are directly below, and the full project table at the bottom for a closer look.

need 3

Actionable Insights

Risk Register

Program Managers and leads each own mitigation work and need to act on risk before it becomes a safety issue. The focus and average risk score anchor the top-left, the risk matrix plots severity against likelihood next to it, and the mitigation timeline shows who's on schedule. The full risk table runs below, so anyone can scan down and see what's expected of them.

outcome

What's Next

The visuals went into a competitive proposal presented to FAA executives. It was praised for great visualizations and hierarchy with potential to feed high-stakes decisions. If the contract moves past the RFP phase, I would:

Test and extend accessible elements
Add interactions (click a line item for detail, reveal more on hover)
Connect to the backend and measure load times on large datasets

reflection

Takeaways

Even though nothing was usable on day one, the project changed how I design. Design for a single glance: most experiences live or die on the first five seconds, and with no interactions to clarify things, hierarchy and information architecture had to do all the explaining.

Align product, research, and engineering at every step. From prioritization to technical feasibility, those conversations belong before anything is built.