Aviation: CPDLC Touchscreen Interface
The Challenge
Traditional CPDLC systems often rely on complex, text-heavy interfaces that can increase a pilot's cognitive load, especially during critical flight phases. The challenge was to reimagine this interaction for a modern, touch-based flight deck, ensuring that communication with ATC could be managed more efficiently and with fewer errors.
My Approach & Contributions
High-Fidelity Prototyping: Working from initial sketches and requirements provided by the ADAIR project team, I was responsible for designing the complete high-fidelity user interface in Figma. This involved translating low-fidelity concepts into a polished, user-centric prototype and iterating on the design based on team feedback to refine workflows and ensure usability.
Full-Stack Development: I was tasked with building a functional, full-stack web application. After evaluating the technical constraints, including the need to integrate with the Ingescape cross-server platform, I built the application.
I used Python and Flask to build a functional back-end and front-end, creating the communication protocols to handle real-time data exchange and accurately simulate the pilot-ATC interaction.
Live Deployment: A key outcome of my work was deploying the interface as a live, interactive web application. This allowed for immediate testing and demonstration of the system's capabilities
The Outcome
The result was a high-fidelity CPDLC prototype that successfully demonstrated the feasibility of a touch-based communication system for cockpits. This project showcased my ability to translate complex team requirements into a polished UI/UX design and then carry that design through to a fully functional, deployed web application.
Project Team & Acknowledgments
This project was a collaborative effort as part of the ADAIR project at Polytechnique Montreal, McGill University. While my role focused on the high-fidelity UI design in Figma and full-stack web development, this work was built upon the foundational contributions of my colleagues.
Airport Moving Map: The core design and implementation of the airport moving map component were led by Corentin Conann (PHD Student at McGill) and Shristi Rawal (Master's student at PolyMTL)
Initial Concepts: The initial UX concepts and low-fidelity sketches were provided by Srishti Rawal
My contributions: UI/UX design (Figma), front-end development (Python), and back-end integration (Flask).