Everyone loves 1-day delivery. There is something so exciting once we order that perfect cellphone case or that cool t-shirt and can’t wait to have it in our hands. But how does it get to you? Air Cargo, you say. True, but it is slightly complicated than that.  While working for a UX Design consultancy/agency, I worked on a pitch for an Air Cargo Planning System for a client in Singapore. We got limited time, that of 2 days to come up with a new concepts. Since it was a pitch we only got to do some quick secondary research on the subject of air cargos. 

Background

Cargo is packed into boxes called Unit Loading Devices (ULD). This makes packaging easier and also helps in balancing the aircraft. If the Center of Gravity of the aircraft is disturbed, the aircraft will not respond to controls correctly which may lead to a crash.

The Problem

Cargo handling is usually managed by airport authorities. So the cargo comes to the terminal, is sorted by airport workers manually and then assigned to each ULD which is then assigned to a flight. This process is complex in itself and add to that the antiquated softwares used the by workers and you have the perfect recipe for stress which leads to minor but threatening incidents. The current software used by our client had a screen with a grid of buttons with different flows all segregated by each button. The problem was that since there was no natural flow, it took weeks to train a worker to use this system. Add to that, workers used to get printouts of all the flights assigned to them, and had to manually check which flight is going to depart or arrive first.

Persona

Stress/Anxiety Levels before a flight departs/arrives

Findings

The Solution

I came up with a flow that allows the worker to focus on the flight that is going to depart first. The idea was to develop a natural flow and will also automate a lot of mundane tasks, for example when assigning ULD’s to a flight, you have to manually select the aircraft type and then assign the ULDs which match the aircraft type. In the proposed system, the software determines the aircraft type from the flight

The Dashboard

ULD Screen

The screen lets you see all the ULDs that are associated with this flight. You can add or remove ULDs and add/remove items from them. ULDs are also marked for the type of cargo they are carrying, a ULD carrying Note 7s must be marked flammable! Ha!

I also proposed a recommendation engine, that starts recommending items to add to the ULD based on the existing items. For example, if one ULD contains fragile items, the system would start recommending fragile items for easier classification. Right now this process is manual and the workers have to keep track of each item and its type.

Confirmation

The last screen acts as a ‘tick’ for the flight. The idea was to mark each flight as reviewed to instill a sense of completion which was missing in the current system. Each reviewed flight will be removed from the dashboard