How do you create a dashboard that explores the “Butterfly Effect” of fuel loss in flights?
The problem
The goal of Boeing Fleet Fuel Conservation dashboards is to enable executives the ability to easily view overall airplane fuel conservation by analyzing flight operations across the fleet.
The next generation of Boeing airplanes needed to take into consideration fuel efficiency. Executives within the corporation were eager to look at the flight data to discover and define various algorithms to dial into opportunities to save fuel.
Upon the deep dive into datasets pulled from airplane flights, executives started to realize that adjustments in flight routes and wing design (which lead to the design of the 737 MAX) could save millions of dollars in fuel costs.
My role and teams involved
My role was senior UX designer under the assistance of a managing director, a program manager, and a senior developer.
As a team, we met with data scientists, and researchers working with Boeing to explore combined data sets aligned to various defined algorithms. Airplane flight diagnostics provided the raw data.
The solution
As a UX designer, I worked with data analysts and developers to develop an interactive “visual story” for a dashboard. My goal was to provide Senior executives the ability to explore various algorithms to view fuel savings across the fleet- down to a specific flight aligned to an airport location.
I also worked with developers working within the Tableau environment to customize the data visualizations that emerged through applied algorithms.
The learnings
The dashboards provide senior executives the ability to discover trends, define new strategies and optimize consistencies. The initial work here allows executives to view opportunities to discover flights that optimized fuel conservation to create new systems, adjust designs, and change flight routes to optimize efficiencies across the international fleet.
A very enlightening project about applying algorithms to various instrumentation panel data sets to predict fuel savings: small changes lead to significant results in flight operations. For example, a minimal change in the wing flap or an altitude adjustment could save substantial amounts of fuel across the fleet globally, changing the way pilots fly or influence airplane manufacturing.
