The product
Jeppesen Distribution Manager Pro (JDM Pro) is the aviation industry's most widely used content distribution platform. It manages and delivers flight-critical navigational data, charts, and other content from multiple sources to pilot mobile devices (Electronic Flight Bag applications used in the cockpit). At the time of this work, JDM Pro was distributing 40TB of data per month to over 400 aviation organizations and more than 400,000 devices, enabling over 110 million paperless flights.
The primary users of the platform were the administrators managing this distribution: airline operations teams, fleet managers, and Jeppesen account representatives. Their work was operationally critical: incorrect or delayed content distribution could create disruptions in flight operations.
The problem
The existing JDM Pro interface was outdated and not designed around how administrators actually worked. Straightforward tasks like managing device assignments, monitoring distribution status, and configuring group-based content rules required too many steps, too much interpretation, and too much reliance on support to resolve confusion.
The support burden was measurable. Administrators were contacting support for issues that a well-designed interface should have prevented. The platform's scale meant that even small usability failures were multiplied across hundreds of organizations worldwide.
When the stakes are operational disruptions to commercial flight, "confusing interface" is not an acceptable design outcome.
The research
I owned the full UX research process: journey mapping to model how administrators moved through their real workflows, feedback sessions with active users to surface where the existing interface broke down, and surveys to quantify the patterns. Usability testing validated design decisions before they reached production.
The research consistently pointed to the same failures: workflows that didn't match mental models, status information that was hard to parse at a glance, and group and device management patterns that required administrators to hold too much context in their heads. The redesign addressed these systematically.
The work
I owned full product UX for JDM Pro: research, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design across the entire platform. The output was not static artifacts. I built production-ready Angular front-end code that Jeppesen's back-end engineering team integrated directly into the platform. This meant design decisions were validated in working interfaces, not mockups, and the engineering team's front-end burden was removed entirely.
The redesign reorganized the administrator experience around the actual tasks: clear device and group status at a glance, streamlined content assignment workflows, and a dashboard that surfaced what needed attention without requiring administrators to go looking for it.
The outcome
The redesign measurably reduced support contacts. Administrators were able to complete core tasks without escalating to support, which had been a persistent pattern with the previous interface. At the scale JDM Pro operates, reducing support dependency across 400+ organizations represented meaningful operational improvement for both Jeppesen and its customers.
40TB
DATA PER MONTH
Distributed to aviation organizations worldwide.
400K+
DEVICES
Pilot EFB devices receiving flight-critical content.
110M+
PAPERLESS FLIGHTS
Enabled by the platform.