Atkins
UX Designer: Andy Lewis
UI Designer: Andy Lewis
Lead consultants: Dan Wylie, Richard Bassett
#UX Design #PRODUCT DESIGN #UI DESIGN
Flo: Cutting aerospace assessment times by 90% through high-precision UX
Aircraft on Ground (AOG) situations are exceptionally costly; a lengthy manual assessment process for a damaged plane can take up to several hours, resulting in massive flight delays and substantial compensation claims. Working within an agile engineering incubator cycle for Atkins, I acted as the UX Design Lead for the iPad component of Flo—a digital, cloud-based aircraft damage assessment system designed to reduce assessment times by up to 90%.
To bridge the gap between complex engineering manuals and hangar-floor realities, I led comprehensive user journey mapping sessions to unpack exactly how engineers operate on site. By translating dense aerospace requirements into a clean tablet interface, we designed out human error and accelerated the entire reporting workflow. Key product design innovations included Frictionless OCR Tail-Scanning, Interactive 3D Fuselage Mapping, Automated 3D Scanning Integration, and a Master-Detail Database Architecture. The final system successfully moved operators away from slow, ad-hoc communication and gave them a secure, global single source of truth.
The high-stakes hangar
In commercial aviation, "Aircraft on Ground" (AOG) situations are a multi-million-pound vulnerability. When a plane is damaged, traditional manual measurements and paper-based reporting take hours to process. These systemic delays trigger costly flight cancellations, brand damage, and passenger compensation claims. Our objective during an agile three-month incubator cycle for Atkins was to replace this analog bottleneck with a rapid, digital-first workflow.
Unpacking the flow
To understand the operational friction, we initiated comprehensive user journey mapping sessions with on-tarmac engineers. The biggest cognitive barrier we identified was a lack of instant context. Because engineers inspect dozens of aircraft daily, they had to painstakingly cross-reference paper records to determine if a specific fuselage dent was a fresh hazard or an existing, pre-logged defect. The old process was slow, highly inconsistent, and prone to human error.
Frictionless OCR onboarding
We realised the digital experience needed to be seamless right from the start. Rather than forcing engineers to manually type out complex, error-prone text strings on a mobile screen, we leveraged the iPad's camera to create an elegant entry point. By implementing on-device Optical Character Recognition (OCR), an engineer could simply point the camera at the aircraft’s tail registration. In an instant, the system read the registration letters, automatically pulled down the specific aircraft type and MSN number from the database, and immediately routed the user to the correct digital master file.
The 3D fuselage canvas
The heart of the user interface was an interactive, 3D fuselage model designed around intuitive, native iPad gestures like pinching and zooming to rotate the aircraft. To relieve the cognitive load on the engineers, we mapped historical defects directly onto this 3D model using a simple, traffic-light color-coded system (Red, Amber, Green). This visual layout gave the team instant context; as they walked around the physical plane, they could quickly look at the digital model to verify if a dent had already been safely logged, drastically cutting down field assessment time.
Automating technical metrics
When a brand-new defect was identified, the engineer simply tapped the exact location on the 3D fuselage model to create a new entry (for instance, "Defect #33"). Traditional reporting relied on manual tape measurements, but we integrated state-of-the-art 3D scanning hardware right onto the back of the iPad. By holding up the device, the engineer could scan the damage, allowing the system to automatically extrapolate precise height, width, and depth metrics. This automated data populated alongside standard form fields, capturing critical technical parameters like "distance to edge" and material types without demanding tedious data entry.
A global source of truth
To keep these massive data sets organised, we structured the UI around a robust master-detail hierarchy where individual defects were nested inside a single, Master Damage Report tied to that aircraft’s tail registration. These reports synced instantly to a secure cloud database, populating a streamlined, infinite-scroll dashboard sorted by the most recent entries. Hangar managers could search by tail number or status (Red, Amber, Green) to instantly prioritise repairs. By moving away from slow, ad-hoc paper communication, the final system successfully cut assessment times by up to 90% and established a globally accessible, single source of truth for fleet health.
