Digital service design for Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce are the gold standard in engine design in the aviation industry. I led a design project, with Candyspace, to improve their digital service.

Design lead • Service design • User research • UX/UI • User testing

The brief

As part of a larger transformation project, improve Rolls Royce’s global service provision for their Airline Support Teams (ASTs).

Approach

Focusing on improving service design for Airline Support Teams, as part of a broader transformation project, we kicked off a discovery process to understand the roles, tasks, systems and all of the detail of what was involved day to day for them, while supporting both global airline and private aviation customers. We then moved on to shaping an MVP that could be tested and then shipped, as part of a new digital service platform.

I led an initial discovery process, to understand Rolls-Royce’s complex service, using service design methodologies.
Working closely with Rolls-Royce team members and stakeholders, I iterated from initial journey mapping to a testable prototype.
Following on from UX testing, I led design for a hi-fidelity prototype and key screen designs, which we continued to test, before shipping the end solution.

Discovery

Research including on-site, team observation and interviews to understand roles, tasks, needs and pain points.
Workshops with AST staff to refine understanding and design As-Is service blueprint.
As-Is user journey storyboarding and detailed process/system flow
interrogation.

Understanding the complexity of Rolls-Royce’s service delivery was crucial to enable us to design an improved service for the AST teams.

After running initial discovery workshops with AST team members, we prioritised a high-value (part-replacement) journey to focus on for our eventual MVP. I mapped the current service delivery model in a service blueprint, and worked with the stakeholders to interrogate each step of their task flows.

UX design

To-Be user journey storyboarding.
Assessing pain-points and prioritising high-value/low-effort opportunities for improvement.
Workshopping low-fidelity solutions with AST stakeholders.

UX work started with creating user flows and low-fidelity user journeys. Much of this was about getting required data and ensuring service triggers were provisioned correctly, in line with Rolls-Royce’s SLAs. I also stripped-out unnecessary steps in the existing journeys, to reduce inefficiencies and friction, as well as improve service-status awareness for AST teams.

Solution design

Refining core UX into hi-fidelity prototype journeys.
Continued user-testing with AST stakeholders.
Design refinement and integrating into new service platform.

Lo-fidelity prototypes transitioned into designing hi-fidelity prototypes. I tested these regularly, in weekly sessions with the AST stakeholders, to ensure we iterated quickly towards a deliverable MVP.

I led the UI design for the hi-fidelity prototype, working closely with a UI designer, who was simultaneously working on the design system components, for the new digital platform.

Outcomes

The prototype design was adopted into the production design flow for part management and went on to be fully integrated into the end solution for Airline Support Teams.

View Candyspace’s case study video

AST participants reported a high degree of usability and improved efficiency with the new experience.
The AST solution shipped as part of a single, integrated service platform and is now being used to manage parts across global fleets.