
Matt Wahba
Product Design Leader & UX Strategist
Mission-Critical Aircraft Maintenance Tools
Designing tools for the crews keeping Canada's search-and-rescue aircraft mission-ready.
The Government of Canada procured a fleet of 16 new search and rescue aircraft for the Canadian Armed Forces, replacing aging legacy fleets with a modern, technologically advanced aircraft. Supporting the transition required a new generation of software for the crews responsible for maintaining and operating the new fleet.
Hired by Avanade, I joined the program as the sole UX lead, working directly with engineering subject-matter experts and aircraft maintenance teams to understand highly technical operational workflows. My role spanned both design and guidance: for some workflows I designed the screens directly, for others I defined the pattern and interaction logic (for example, when a task called for a modal versus a full page, or how a multi-step process like uninstalling a part should be broken into stages) and worked with the team to carry it into the application.
The aircraft entered operational service in May 2025, nearly nine years after the contract was awarded in 2016.
Users
Aircraft maintenence workers
Team Setting
Collaborated remotely and on site with teams across Montreal, Ottawa, and Madrid.
01. Inventory Module
Organizing a catalogue of aircraft components and configurations
The Inventory module provides a centralized catalogue of all allowed nodes and parts in the system, defining what components can exist within an aircraft configuration and how they relate to one another. Users can then trace those components through their installation history, seeing where a part has been installed, removed, or replaced across aircraft and over time.

02. Service Bulletin Module
Turning modification directives into a clear, trackable process
A Service Bulletin is a document issued by a component manufacturer to describe a modification, inspection, replacement, or other technical procedure that should be performed on an aircraft. I designed the Service Bulletin module around the questions maintenance teams need to answer: What is changing? Which aircraft are affected? What configuration changes are required? And has the work been completed? The interface transforms a complex engineering record into a workflow teams can understand and act on.


03. Fleet Summary
Giving operations teams a single source of truth for the fleet
Operations teams needed to understand the status of all 16 aircraft at a glance, availability, configuration state, and maintenance history, without digging into individual records. I defined the information hierarchy and interaction patterns for the overview page, working with engineering SMEs to determine which details operators needed to see immediately versus on demand, then partnered with the team to bring that structure into the application.
