Educating & Connecting Pilots Around the Globe
My Role: User Research; Information Architecture; Wireframes; Website Design: Desktop & Mobile; Illustrations & Iconography
A modern resource for flying safe
The Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association (COPA) is a global non-profit focused on flight safety, new technologies, and community building. We created a modern, user-friendly website with a forum for pilots, a live calendar of events, classes, and trips, as well as infographics on safety equipment and access to the COPA magazine archive. I played a key role, conducting interviews, organizing information, creating IA maps, workflows, wireframes, and addressing user pain points. I also designed the platform's visual style, including colors, fonts, and images, and developed a Figma guide for future updates.
Home page hero banner, desktop & mobile.
Banner on the home page, showing the effectiveness of CAPS equipment usage in saving lives, updated daily with real data based on event history.
Full home page design highlighting the main features available and several safety resources.
Events calendar page, desktop & mobile.
Part of the challenge was to quickly show the effectiveness of the CAPS system, a crucial tool in saving lives in the event of a plane malfunction. Initial research showed users simply didn't use the system due to not knowing it existed. So I idealized and designed data visualization graphics, as well as a dedicated CAPS page (above), showing core features of the system, as well as effectiveness increase over the years.
With this new approach, users can also search and view every single instance where the CAPS system was effective in saving lives over the years. This timeline also shows the events where CAPS couldn't prevent fatalities, providing reasons and details.
We implemented a brand new article search feature, highlighting their most visited categories.
Another challenge we faced as a team was to make the onboarding process as easy as possible for prospective members.
Our research revealed users would often message the client asking “How do I join COPA on the website?", “why isn't my password working?", or even “I entered my info, what happens now?". These messages were overflowing their internal system, so I worked with copywriters to tackle the problem at the source.
We simplified input fields, always aiding buttons and links with clear text, and informing all password requirements before users attempt to create a password.
We also created a step-by-step page showing what users would need to do next to complete their registration process successfully.
Using Figma, I developed a quick visual guide to aid developers. This guide showed the initial, hover, and other states for each interactive asset in the platform. It also contained instructions on colors, fonts, gradients, and other effects.
This was a complex project, which involved the creation of a new Information Architecture map from scratch. This picture shows the complete website structure, with all the pages I designed.
Sections that are visible to all have different visual cues than sections that are "members only". The map also brings a quick guide explaining details. This was a working document used by the entire team involved in this project.
