"Delivering this redesign was one of the most meaningful experiences in my career — seeing the team go from daily stress to genuine relief and confidence was profoundly rewarding."
Introduction
Industry
Airports, B2B Services
Technology
Web, AEM, RIA
Teams
One Man Unicorn
Projet
Waterfall
Approach
My mission was to redesign and optimize this environment from the ground up — not just for usability, but for emotional and operational relief.
I began by conducting in-depth user research, including interviews with frustrated team members, contextual inquiries, and stress-point mapping.
I reconstructed the entire information architecture, collapsing a bloated interface of dozens of screens into a streamlined 7-screen flow, carefully structured around user mental models and core workflows.
Key changes included:
Drastically simplifying the rule creation process, reducing input time from 45 minutes to just 3 minutes
Introducing warning and confirmation mechanisms to prevent silent errors
Building feedback loops and in-system save states, eliminating the need for external backups
Designing with psychological safety in mind — clarity, predictability, and minimal cognitive friction
Challenge
Sabre IntelliSell Rules Manager — a highly complex SaaS platform — was originally designed to manage advanced pricing and routing rules for the travel booking industry. Despite its technical power, the system had become a source of constant stress and burnout for the teams who used it daily.
Employees were quitting within a quarter, unable to withstand the pressure. Mistakes in rule configuration could carry heavy business and legal consequences, with no error protection mechanisms in place. Users resorted to creating multiple manual backups of rules on their desktops to safeguard against irreversible errors. On top of this, the system would unexpectedly log out, and adding a single rule could take up to 45 minutes.
Services
- UX research with high-stress teams
- Task flow optimization and logic restructuring
- Full redesign of the UI (wireframes + high-fidelity mockups)
- Simplified information architecture (from 30+ screens to 7 core views)
- Interaction design for speed, error prevention, and transparency
- Usability testing and iteration under real-world scenarios