Summary

We secured Airbus development contract for a collaboration feature by making a high-level concept feasible through iterative user testing and interviews with professional users.

Problem:  

Airbus and Valispace aimed to modernize digital collaboration workflows. The challenge of the collaboration lied in translating a high level idea to concrete user requirements and prototype solutions that reflect constraints, complexity and scael sufficiently to get an approval for a development contract, securing 100.000s in funding to develop new features.

Context:

Airbus & Valispace agreed on the high level concept of the solution, but Airbus had concerns regarding the practicality of a solution within the day to day reality of hardware engineering. Both sides had difficulty making their concerns more concrete in either writing or visuals. I joined the team and applied UX Research and UX Design method.

Research Goal:

Understand and refine user requirements for a collaboration feature in hardware engineering.

Method: 

• Unstructured User Interviews
• Task based user testing with Experts
• Post-interview with Experts
• User Stories
• Prototyping in Figma 

Timeline, Tools, Ressources:

• 2 Months
• Google Analytics, Clarity, Optimizely

What I did:

• Organized and conducted weekly semi-structured interviews and user testing sessions.
• Collaborated with internal Subject Matter Experts on writing and editing user stories, based on UX Research and expert knowledge.
• Synthesized weekly insights and maintained regular alignment with key stakeholders, including the Customer Success Manager, Chief Product Officer, and Chief Technology Officer.

Results:  

• UX Research and Design efforts played a key role in securing a valuable development contract with Airbus, contributing funds to build the feature and fund the operations of the Startup. 
• Spearheaded User Stories, User Testing and User Interviews in the company. 

Key Learnings:

• Professional users may struggle to articulate assumptions and complex workflows, because they have become second nature.
• Task-based testing and interviews allow users to be more concrete about very specific and highly complex user needs.
• Balancing industry constraints is crucial for successful innovation in workflows, avoiding replication of existing limitations or risking non-adoption by companies tied to established norms.