Enterprise UX Travel Industry Legacy Modernization 2020–2023

Airline Settlement Interfaces for Accuracy and Speed

A UX-led overhaul of reconciliation systems used by 200+ airlines and travel agencies to reduce errors, improve clarity, and support compliance at scale.

Role
Sr. UX Designer Financial Workflows
Company
Airlines Reporting Corp. Arlington, VA
Timeline
2020–2023 Multi-year initiative
Methods
Async Usability Testing Discovery · Systems Design

Detailed designs and artifacts are omitted to respect client confidentiality. NDA-cleared work available on request.

00

Background

I joined a multi-year initiative at Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) — the financial clearinghouse between airlines and travel agencies — to modernize legacy tools supporting transaction reporting and settlement.

The work centered on rethinking fragmented financial workflows spanning multiple legacy systems, with the goal of improving clarity, efficiency, and trust for agents and airline partners alike.

✈️
What ARC Does

ARC is the financial clearinghouse that sits between airlines and travel agencies. Every refund, exchange, and commission flows through its settlement systems. The accuracy and speed of these tools directly affects airline revenue, agency compliance, and customer trust.

Two core systems were at the center of this work. DRS stored and displayed settled transactions, acting as a historical archive. IAR allowed agents to edit active transactions within the current reporting window. Together they formed a critical but fragmented workflow — and neither had evolved meaningfully in over two decades.

01

Problem

Core Challenge

How do you modernize a financial compliance workflow that 200+ airlines and agencies depend on daily — without disrupting the precision and timing the industry requires?

ARC's core financial workflows relied on separate, decades-old systems handling related but disconnected parts of the transaction lifecycle. The friction was compounded at every level:

Fragmented workflows
Agents had to open DRS and IAR simultaneously, cross-reference document numbers manually, and often resort to screenshots or spreadsheets to reconcile mismatched data.
UI debt
Dense data tables, confusing labels, and cumbersome navigation reflected interfaces that hadn't evolved with user needs in over twenty years.
Terminology misalignment
Labels and status indicators meant different things across tools and teams, causing misinterpretation at points where errors had real financial consequences.
No culture of validation
User-centered discovery had not been embedded in ARC's product process. Building that foundation was as much a part of the work as the UI itself.
02

Process

Due to NDA constraints, I'm focusing on principles and approach rather than specific screens or flows. Three design principles shaped every decision:

P-01 Clarity over completeness
Principle
Surface the information users most frequently need to verify or explain transactions — not the full depth of the system by default. Progressive disclosure over information overload.
Why it mattered
Agents under time pressure made more errors when confronted with dense, unfiltered data. Reducing cognitive load at the decision point directly reduced error rates.
P-02 Terminology alignment
Principle
Audit, flag, and redesign ambiguous labels that caused misinterpretation across tools and teams. Language is part of the UX.
Why it mattered
A single misunderstood status label could trigger incorrect downstream actions in a compliance-sensitive workflow. Getting terminology right was a risk-reduction strategy.
P-03 Shareable states
Principle
Design streamlined, readable views optimized for communication with end customers — reflecting how agents already worked in practice.
Why it mattered
Agents were already creating screenshots and workarounds to share transaction status with customers. Designing for that reality eliminated shadow workflows.

Research & Validation

One of the most significant contributions of this project was introducing a new testing model to ARC. I designed an asynchronous usability testing approach that allowed participants to explore interactive prototypes on their own schedule — reducing scheduling friction and producing more natural behavioral signals than traditional moderated sessions.

200+
Airlines and travel agencies using these systems
20+ yrs
Age of the legacy systems being modernized
3
Core design principles driving every decision
Testing Model
Async Usability Approach
  • Lightweight interactive prototypes
  • Behavioral observation without scheduling
  • Structured feedback collection
  • Later adopted org-wide
Discovery Methods
Research Toolkit
  • Stakeholder workshops
  • Terminology audits across systems
  • Shadow workflow mapping
  • Cross-team alignment sessions

The testing model proved effective enough that it was adopted more broadly within the organization — shifting how ARC teams approached discovery going forward.

— Project Outcome, ARC Settlement Modernization
03

Outcome

The specific product initiative was ultimately deprioritized due to shifting business priorities. But the work had lasting organizational impact — which in legacy transformation contexts is often the harder and more meaningful outcome to achieve.

Product Impact
  • Demonstrated usability validation value in a legacy-heavy environment
  • Rebuilt visible trust with users by showing ARC was actively listening
  • Reduced shadow workflows through shareable state design
Organizational Impact
  • Async testing model adopted org-wide
  • Contributed to internal frameworks formalizing when design research is embedded in product development
  • Influenced how ARC teams approach discovery going forward
04

Reflection

This project taught me that digital transformation in legacy organizations is sometimes less about the interface and more about shifting how a company listens to its users.

I learned to frame design not as a one-time delivery, but as a catalyst for organizational learning — maintaining a constant feedback loop among internal stakeholders and customers. Each usability test, workshop, and conversation nudged ARC closer to that shift.

What Worked
  • Async testing removed scheduling friction and produced better behavioral data
  • Principle-led design gave the team a shared language for tradeoff decisions
  • Treating terminology as a design problem surfaced risk early
Next Steps (if continued)
  • Root cause analysis on document-type confusion
  • Card sorting and tree testing for navigation and terminology
  • Deeper alignment between engineering and design around shared data models

The success of Financial Center manifested in the mindset shift of a forty-year-old organization beginning to embrace UX as a lens for clarity, trust, and continuous improvement.