Client
Fedex Acc
Year
2025-2026
Duration
Bangalore,India
Stack
Figma, Angular, HTML , CSS, Git
Summary
FedEx Aviate is a secure pricing solution designed to automate and govern high-value Global Account Freight (GAF) agreements, successfully retiring outdated, error-prone legacy spreadsheets.The UX Workflow: It establishes a seamless, multi-role digital relay across four distinct corporate personas (Sales, GNDE, GPA, and RPA) supported by an intelligent column-mapping engine and real-time validation gates.The Business Impact: By turning week-long email chains into a fast-tracked, compliant workflow, the application achieved 100% data accuracy and slashed contract turnaround times (TAT) by an impressive 75%.
Defining Problems
To truly map the complexities of the existing pipeline, we conducted deep contextual inquiries and job-shadowing sessions with global account executives and pricing teams across multiple time zones. We discovered that analysts were drowning in cognitive fatigue, spending hours manually cross-referencing customer-provided spreadsheets with rigid internal template columns. The emotional journey of a Sales user was defined by anxiety, as they had no real-time visibility into whether a high-value bid was stuck with the regional or global pricing team. We systematically mapped these multi-persona workflows and user journeys, identifying massive drop-off points where rate compliance was broken and handoffs became completely blind. This intensive research proved that we did not just need another static database; we needed a state-driven, visual relay system that could track lane-level negotiation statuses in real time while automating the tedious, manual data-alignment process.
Challenges
The critical challenge in designing FedEx Aviate was to replace a sluggish, fragmented legacy pricing workflow with an elite, end-to-end management engine for our highest-tier global corporate agreements. Previously, the high-stakes Global Account Freight (GAF) pricing process was buried under chaotic, manual Excel worksheets, slow email handoffs, and highly insecure communication loops. For our most valuable VIP enterprise clients, getting a custom multi-continental rate quote took weeks, plagued by constant data-entry errors, rate leaks, and a complete lack of formal regulatory governance. The design team was tasked with building a highly secure, automated web platform that could seamlessly coordinate four distinct operational personas—Sales, GNDE operators, Global Pricing Analysts, and Regional Analysts. The system had to effortlessly process hundreds of thousands of complex shipping lanes, while establishing ironclad role-based boundaries, strict transaction security, and automated validation rules that left zero room for operational error.
Solutions
Our solution is FedEx Aviate—a highly sophisticated, high-altitude GAF pricing platform that transforms complex global logistics contracts into a fast, automated, and beautifully synchronized workflow. At its core, Aviate introduces an intelligent, algorithm-driven import engine that automatically maps customer-provided lanes into standardized templates with high precision. We designed a clear, stage-driven timeline progress bar at the top of the screen that visually guides the deal through its exact lifecycle: from Sales template upload to GNDE operational evaluation, Global PA optimization, and Regional PA rate adjustments. By incorporating real-time validation gates, dynamic surcharge waiver tools, and automated agreement generation, Aviate creates an airtight digital ecosystem. This seamless coordination allows FedEx to secure massive, high-revenue corporate accounts with unprecedented speed, complete regulatory compliance, and total transparency across all operational teams.
Design System
To ground this powerful enterprise engine, we engineered the "Stratos" design system, a highly structured component library built directly on top of FedEx’s iconic purple and orange brand identity. We selected a clean, geometric sans-serif typeface optimized for maximum readability in compact, data-dense environments, ensuring that dense rates and transit times are legible at a glance. Our palette leverages professional grays and deep corporate purple for primary navigation, utilizing vibrant flight orange as a high-visibility accent for active steps, call-to-actions, and state transitions. Crucially, we designed a soft, semantic color system for the data grids—highlighting validated successful data in gentle green, highlighting syntax errors in soft red, and marking adjusted rate cells in blue. This robust library of state-driven components, flexible dropdowns, and responsive drawers established a highly unified, secure, and modern B2B interface that feels incredibly premium.
Desktop First Approach
Because Aviate is a heavy-duty operational tool built for specialists managing thousands of complex shipping lanes simultaneously, we adopted an uncompromising desktop-first design philosophy. We optimized the entire workspace for large, high-resolution office monitors, maximizing the screen's real estate to present dense, multi-column data grids without causing visual clutter. We designed advanced grid interactions, including horizontal frozen columns for lane IDs, responsive column sorting, and custom inline text-editing fields that mimic the familiarity of desktop spreadsheet software. Complex multi-step actions—like configuring intricate surcharge structures or mapping customer columns side-by-side—were built as deep, full-width workspace panels rather than cramped, frustrating modal popups. This deliberate desktop optimization provides our analysts with a high-efficiency dashboard that dramatically minimizes horizontal scrolling, prevents cognitive overload, and respects the advanced speed of expert users.
Protoypes
We constructed highly interactive, high-fidelity prototypes in Figma to map the complex, multi-persona relay race before entering the core engineering sprints. Using advanced variables, conditional logic, and interactive component states, we simulated the exact user flows for each of the four roles, validating how data seamlessly shifts through various access permissions. We tested these prototypes with focus groups of Sales users and pricing analysts, ensuring the drag-and-drop file uploaders and the column-mapping interface felt completely natural and error-free. This testing allowed us to fine-tune subtle micro-interactions, such as the loading animations during heavy database transformations and the toast notifications that appear when lanes are successfully routed. By delivering a pixel-perfect, interactive prototype that mapped out every edge-case error state, we provided our development team with a flawless, airtight roadmap that dramatically accelerated our engineering phase.
2 Stage Launch
To ensure complete system stability and zero disruption to active enterprise sales cycles, we executed a highly controlled, three-stage release program. We initiated the journey with an exclusive closed alpha program for a selected group of North American Sales users and GNDE analysts, stress-testing our core database queries, Okta SSO integrations, and file uploaders under real-world conditions. Armed with direct usage analytics, we expanded into a multi-regional open beta, rolling out the automatic mapping algorithms and multi-tier approval flows to GPA and RPA cohorts across Europe and APAC. This crucial feedback loop allowed us to optimize heavy processing times, eliminate minor column-mapping bugs, and refine our real-time error validation screens. The final phase was a triumphant global rollout, successfully migrating all active accounts, retiring legacy macro sheets, and delivering a flawless, high-performance platform that users adopted without friction.
Results & Impact
The global launch of FedEx Aviate has been an absolute game-changer, completely revolutionizing our enterprise pricing speed and establishing a new gold standard for B2B contract workflows. By replacing manual column matching with our intelligent mapping algorithm, we achieved a staggering 100% data accuracy rate and completely eliminated syntax errors on initial imports. The complex, multi-persona handoff process was reduced from a sluggish, week-long email chain to a lightning-fast digital relay completed in just under an hour, resulting in a phenomenal 75% reduction in overall contract turnaround times. Our VIP customers now receive pre-approved, highly accurate custom pricing agreements faster than ever before, dramatically boosting FedEx’s close rate on high-value global accounts. Ultimately, Aviate transformed a major administrative bottleneck into a highly automated, competitive weapon that drives millions in new shipping revenue annually.
Reflection & Learnings
Designing FedEx Aviate was an incredibly rewarding masterclass in how thoughtful UX design can tame even the most complex, high-friction enterprise systems. I learned that when building for highly specialized operational experts, the goal is not to simplify the interface by stripping away features, but to organize deep, complex tools into highly logical, predictable visual flows. Collaborating closely with back-end engineers and security teams taught me how to turn strict corporate compliance rules and role-based access controls into seamless, state-driven UI boundaries that protect data integrity without slowing down users. If I were to design this platform again, I would introduce custom saved mapping templates even earlier to allow Sales teams to process repeating customer files with a single click. This project has deeply reinforced my belief that when you design with empathy and extreme precision, you can turn heavy corporate tools into truly joyful, empowering experiences.