UX / UI / Visual Design

Providing pilots with an intuitive and compelling way of downloading charts.

General Aviation pilots rely on ForeFlight to download up-to-date FAA and international charts before every flight. These charts contain mission-critical information—airports, frequencies, procedures, airspace restrictions, and more—and are updated on a strict schedule. Pilots must manually download the correct regions to their devices (primarily iPads and iPhones) before filing flight plans and departing.

At the time, ForeFlight’s Downloads experience was primarily list-based and deeply nested, requiring users to navigate multiple levels to select regions. Research showed that pilots found the process repetitive, time-consuming, and unintuitive—especially compared to competitor apps that allowed chart selection directly from a map.

Task

I was asked to design a more intuitive and efficient way for pilots to download charts with the following objectives:

Reduce friction and time required to select chart regions

Introduce a more visual, map-based selection method

Maintain compatibility with existing data structures

Ensure usability across both iPad and iPhone form factors, despite significant screen constraints

Deliver a solution that aligned with ForeFlight’s design system and performance limitations

Action

Research & Problem Definition

Our team conducted user interviews and workflow analysis with active pilots (n = 6). Key insights included:

Users often navigated three levels deep just to select a region

Downloading multiple regions required repetitive taps and context switching

Pilots wanted a map-driven workflow similar to what they used in Garmin Pilot

The existing UI did not provide a clear sense of which regions were selected

From this research, I defined the primary design challenge:
How might we provide an intuitive, visual, and efficient way to download required charts while preserving existing user familiarity?

Early Exploration & Iteration

I led a series of design explorations ranging from incremental improvements to more ambitious concepts. Several early ideas were intentionally discarded after critique and testing because they:

Introduced too much cognitive load

Required engineering effort disproportionate to user value

Conflicted with established navigation patterns

Through iterative prototyping and feedback sessions, I converged on a set of guiding principles:

Consolidate all chart data settings into a single, clear entry point

Allow regions to be browsed hierarchically in a familiar list view

Introduce a synchronized interactive map for visual selection

Ensure selections on the map and list remained bi-directionally linked

Support a “Draw to Select” interaction for bulk selection

These principles formed the basis for the first high-fidelity prototypes.

Designing for iPad First

Given that most pilots used iPads in the cockpit, I initially designed the experience around the larger screen:

A side-by-side interface combining list and map
Real-time correlation between map selections and region cells
Multi-selection gestures optimized for touch

Usability testing of this version showed strong performance (80% task success rate) and validated the overall concept.

Reconsidering the iPhone Experience

Initially, the map experience was scoped only for iPad due to:

Performance considerations

Limited screen real estate

ForeFlight’s historical approach of not enforcing feature parity

However, usability testing quickly challenged this assumption. We discovered that:

Many pilots downloaded charts the night before a flight

The iPhone was often the primary device used for pre-flight downloads

Users explicitly expected the same map workflow on both devices

This insight led to a strategic pivot: the feature needed to be fully supported on iPhone as well.

Three iPhone Concepts & Validation

I designed three distinct iPhone interaction models and conducted comparative usability testing focused on:

Ease of discovery
Learnability of “Tap to Select” and “Draw to Select”
Understanding of the map/list correlation
Clarity of next steps

The winning direction—the “Map Switch” concept—emerged as the strongest because it:Below are the 3 design concepts created and later tested

Preserved the familiar list view as the default

Allowed gradual discovery of the map workflow

Gave users full control over switching contexts

Was the most feasible to implement within platform constraints

This concept also aligned well with existing patterns in ForeFlight, reducing implementation risk.

Prototyping & Collaboration

I created high-fidelity interactive prototypes to:

Validate micro-interactions and transitions
Demonstrate flows to stakeholders and engineering
Support usability testing sessions
Define edge cases such as split-screen multitasking

The chosen design was specifically optimized to support iPad split-screen mode, a critical Apple platform requirement and an important internal success criterion.

Result

The final Map-Based Chart Downloader delivered:

A dramatically simplified chart selection workflow

Reduced navigation depth from 3+ levels to a single view

A unified list + map experience that mirrored real-world pilot behavior

Full functionality on both iPad and iPhone, despite initial constraints

The solution became a foundational interaction model for future map-driven workflows in the app and strengthened ForeFlight’s competitive position against Garmin Pilot.

ForeFlight Map Based Chart Downloader