Delta OneUI Dispatcher Personas

Client Background

Delta Air Lines, Office of Customer Care (OCC)

With a workforce of over 100,000 employees, Delta Air Lines serves nearly 190 million customers annually across 4,000 daily flights to 290 destinations. This study focuses on Delta’s Office of Customer Care (OCC), which oversees critical flight operations, including dispatching services—a role essential for coordinating flight information, communications, and real-time weather tracking.

Challenge

Following the resurgence of air travel in 2022, Delta faced the need to recruit new flight dispatchers to support new routes and fill roles left by retirees. Delta’s IT department launched “OneUI,” a project aimed at consolidating legacy flight operations tools into a unified interface that could simplify dispatcher workflows and ensure both new and experienced dispatchers could perform tasks efficiently. While an initial prototype garnered executive support, the team encountered challenges transitioning the prototype into a product with features that met the practical needs of seasoned dispatchers. The team identified a knowledge gap regarding the dispatchers’ work environment and needed to understand the workforce better to develop OneUI into a user-centered solution.

Project Objectives

To guide OneUI’s development, Delta hired me to conduct generative research to uncover essential user insights. My objective was to capture the nuances of the dispatcher role, assess user needs, and develop detailed personas that would serve as a foundation for feature prioritization, usability testing, and design decisions.

Approach and Methodology

Leveraging my Human-Computer Interaction training at Georgia Tech, I began by observing Delta’s dispatch center, known locally as “the fish bowl.” Over several hours, I documented dispatcher workflows, environmental and technological factors, and key interruption points using FigJam to record notes and organize observations. This initial research helped the team understand external factors affecting dispatcher efficiency, sparking a deeper interest in understanding dispatcher roles.

Dispatcher Observations Organized by Category

The next phase involved developing dispatcher personas. Working with project management, I assembled a team to interview 15 dispatchers, crafting structured questions and preparing data-collection materials to capture detailed insights. We organized our findings through affinity mapping, using FigJam to highlight behavioral patterns and categorize insights. Following the Alan Cooper method for persona creation, we synthesized this data into a set of dispatcher personas, which I presented to Delta’s senior management to guide OneUI’s ongoing development.

User Interviews Process Outline

Duration and Scope

This eight-month project unfolded over three milestones.

• Milestone 1: I conducted and presented initial observational research, clarifying knowledge gaps and helping the product team identify research priorities.
• Milestone 2: My team and I designed interviews, conducted them with 15 dispatchers, and synthesized findings into actionable personas using affinity mapping.
• Milestone 3: I demonstrated the completed personas to senior management via a PowerPoint presentation, providing a foundation for future usability testing and product refinement.

Key Findings

The dispatcher personas provided valuable insights into user needs, enabling the OneUI team to prioritize relevant features and recruit dispatchers for usability testing as development progressed through 2023. The personas informed an iterative testing process, allowing the Interaction Designer to improve the user interface and the Product Manager to refine the feature set. Although I moved on to other projects before OneUI’s initial release, my research was instrumental in shaping its design and facilitating ongoing user engagement.

Summary Graphic of OneUI Dispatcher Personas

Executive Presentation Slide

Recommendations

I recommended using the dispatcher personas to guide usability testing recruitment, ensuring that user feedback could directly influence product improvements throughout development.

Conclusion

This project underscored the value of understanding end-users in complex, high-stakes environments. The personas provided a human-centered perspective that bridged the gap between Delta’s dispatchers and the OneUI development team, enabling a more tailored, user-informed product.