The Boeing Company’s Commercial Market Outlook

Designing a native application to access and explore global airplane forecast data

The Commercial Market Outlook (CMO) is Boeing’s long-term forecast for the commercial aviation industry. To bring this data to life in a modern, accessible way, we designed a mobile application that enables stakeholders to explore aircraft demand, market insights, and regional trends—anytime, anywhere.

The previous experience

Each year, Sales Directors and Regional Marketers attend the Paris or Farnborough Air Show—one of the most critical events in the aviation industry. The show provides Boeing and its competitors with the opportunity to network, showcase innovation, and build strategic partnerships.

In preparation for these events, quick access to up-to-date forecast data is crucial. However, the Commercial Market Outlook (CMO) was traditionally distributed as a printed booklet, making it difficult to search for specific data on the go—especially during fast-paced meetings.

How did I help?

As Lead UX Designer, I was responsible for designing and delivering the CMO app across three platforms: iOS, Android, and Windows. I led the end-to-end Lean UX design process, managed all design artifacts, and supported production releases alongside engineering teams.

The CMO app enables aviation professionals to explore Boeing’s 20-year forecast data—including global and regional aircraft deliveries, fleet growth, traffic flows, and more. It is now publicly accessible and supports key business engagements in the field.

Facilitating a Collaborative Design Process

To kick off the initiative, I followed Pivotal’s Double Diamond framework and facilitated a three-day design thinking workshop to align the team and set clear foundations.

During this workshop, I led sessions with product managers, developers, stakeholders, and fellow designers to:

  • Generate user personas

  • Define what project success looked like

  • Identify key risks and potential mitigators

  • Establish a shared understanding of scope and priorities for the initial release

Image of Pivotal’s Double Diamond process

Understanding the User

I conducted interviews and collaborative discussions to identify key user types. We developed four primary personas to guide our design decisions, each representing different usage contexts, business needs, and tech comfort levels.

Image of four personas

Defining Success Early

As part of our design thinking workshop, I facilitated a Project Success Workshop to align the team on how we would measure impact.

One major success metric: releasing the app ahead of the 2019 Paris Air Show, allowing Sales Directors and Regional Marketers to use the new mobile tool during critical client engagements.

Image of project success workshop

Anticipating Risks & Mitigation

In the same workshop, we surfaced key risks and proactively assigned team members to mitigation strategies.

Top risks included:

  • Delayed app store approval, which could impact a timely release before the Paris Air Show

  • Displaying inaccurate or outdated data, which could damage credibility with stakeholders and clients

We put contingencies in place and aligned with stakeholders early to minimize these risks and ensure data accuracy across platforms.

How might we present complex aviation forecast data in a way that is easily digestible, accessible, and actionable for our target users in the field?

Prioritizing Through Value Analysis

I conducted contextual interviews with key users to understand their needs, behaviors, and pain points when accessing market forecast data. From those insights, I created a value analysis diagram to assess effort vs. impact across potential features—helping the team align on what to prioritize for the initial release.

Image of Value Analysis results

Redefining Navigation for Clarity

Navigation flow emerged as a top priority based on the analysis. To address this, I mapped out a revised information architecture and sitemap, focusing on simplifying access to key data categories while supporting scalability across future updates.

Image of sitemap

Rapid Exploration Through Low-Fidelity Design

To quickly explore layout ideas and information hierarchy, I began with low-fidelity wireframes. This allowed me to focus on structure, navigation, and content flow without getting caught up in visual details—enabling faster collaboration and early feedback from stakeholders.

User Interviews: Understanding Frustrations and Expectations

To validate early assumptions and uncover pain points, I conducted one-on-one interviews with six participants—each familiar with Boeing’s commercial market data. The findings helped shape our feature prioritization and interaction design strategy.

Key Insights:

  • 67% expected an onboarding or welcome message to explain where the data comes from upon opening the app

  • 67% anticipated seeing delivery and fleet data as core content

  • 83% emphasized the need for intuitive navigation and smooth interactions

  • 100% expressed frustration with the previous information architecture

  • 33% wanted related information grouped on the same screen for easier context

  • 33% requested interactive graphs and visualizations to help interpret complex data

Usability Test Insights

I conducted over 12 rounds of usability testing using a combination of internal critiques and moderated sessions with real users. These walkthroughs tested the full experience—from landing on the home screen to exploring regional data.

Key Findings:

All participants (100%) emphasized the importance of easily accessing and comparing core data points:

  • Total Deliveries

  • Current Year and 20-Year Total Fleet (global and regional)

  • Region-Specific Data including Traffic, Fleet Growth, and Market Value

Design Changes Based on Findings

The insights led to key refinements across the app:

  • Surface key metrics on the home page, including Total Deliveries, Current Year Fleet, and Future 20-Year Fleet

  • Break down data per region, showing both current and projected fleet details

  • Add high-level region summaries on individual regional pages to support quick scanning and comparison

High-Fidelity Designs & Developer Handoff

After multiple rounds of design, testing, and iteration, I delivered the final high-fidelity mockups to the development team. I collaborated closely with the developer to ensure a smooth handoff and accurate implementation across platforms.

In preparation for the public release, I also supported the App Store submission process by creating release-ready snapshots and detailed documentation.

Outcomes

The release of the Commercial Market Outlook app significantly improved data accessibility and engagement across Boeing’s global user base. The app’s success demonstrated the value of thoughtful, user-centered design in driving measurable impact.

Key Results:

  • 📲 50,000+ global downloads

  • 📈 +31% increase in conversion rates

  • 👀 +77% increase in impressions

App store release

As part of the App Store release, I also led the design of the CMO application logo. My design goals were to ensure the logo visually aligned with Boeing’s brand while also symbolizing the core purpose of the app: industry insight, growth, and future-forward forecasting.

Logo Design Goals:

  • 📊 Reflect Market Data — visually represent the analytical nature of the app

  • ✈️ Incorporate Boeing Branding — use Boeing Blue, aircraft motifs, and visual cues aligned with existing design language

  • 📈 Symbolize Upward Progression — emphasize growth, forecasting, and forward movement through shape and form

App logo iterations

Final app logo

The final logo was selected through stakeholder review and implemented across all platforms for the public launch.

As part of the release process, I designed the final feature graphic for the Android store listing. This visual was created to reflect the app’s core value—clear, data-driven insights in a mobile-first experience—while aligning with Boeing’s branding and visual standards.

The feature graphic was displayed prominently on the app's store page to capture attention and drive downloads.

Feature graphic

Reflection

  • Define and track success metrics earlier to better connect design decisions to business outcomes

  • Improve design-to-development handoff by adopting more modern tools and documentation workflows

  • Establish a lightweight design system to ensure consistency and accelerate future iterations

Areas for Improvement

Challenges Faced

  • Tight timeline: Less than six months to design, build, and release across platforms

  • Limited access to end-users: Recruiting participants for interviews and usability testing was challenging

  • Tooling constraints: Lacked design collaboration tools like InVision and Design System Manager (DSM)

  • Manual handoff process: Relied on Word documents and PowerPoint decks for developer specs

Next Steps

  • Continue working through backlog items for future feature releases

  • Build a dedicated UX design system or component library for this application

  • Explore new mobile-friendly data visualizations that simplify complex datasets

  • Investigate opportunities to add comparison functionality for cross-regional and historical insights

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