AviaCost

Designing a cost intelligence platform for business aviation

Context

AviaCost is a business aviation SaaS platform that helps operators, brokers, and aircraft owners estimate and understand aircraft operating costs. Decisions in this space are expensive and reputation-sensitive, so trust and clarity were of great importance. The product needed to replace fragmented spreadsheet workflows, and speed up the decision making process.

Challenge

The cost-estimation workflow had pain points that Excel could not solve cleanly:

• Too much manual effort and repeated calculation work
• Hard to standardize assumptions across users and scenarios
• High risk of misunderstanding or miscommunication when sharing results

Design Process

Desktop UI was built by translating stakeholder wireframes into production-grade, clickable prototypes – focusing on hierarchy, repeatable patterns, and complete states for dense financial calculators. For iOS, I mapped core tasks and navigation, selected proven interaction patterns via reference research, and iterated quickly with engineering review to ensure feasibility and consistency across web and mobile. The emphasis throughout was trust, scannability, and comparison clarity in high-density cost modeling.

Solution Highlights

Cost Calculator

AviaCost’s core challenge is enabling people to make confident, repeatable decisions in a high-stakes domain. The calculator experience is designed to eliminate the slow parts of spreadsheet workflows (setup, copying templates, verification, and rework) while preserving what experts need: control over assumptions and transparent outputs.

Key design moves that drive time savings and reliability:

• Structured inputs reduce spreadsheet drift. Users change assumptions through named fields with consistent units (hours, fuel cost/gal, depreciation %, etc.), instead of hunting through cells and worrying about accidental overwrites.
• Instant recomputation across the full model. Updating a few variables recalculates hourly/monthly/annual outputs immediately, removing the “rebuild + verify” loop that makes Excel iteration slow.
• Comparison is built into the workflow. Up to five aircraft live in a single session with a consistent layout, so side-by-side evaluation doesn’t require duplicating sheets or manually aligning outputs.
• “Apply to all” + defaults accelerate scenario modeling. Shared assumptions can be propagated across aircraft, reducing repeated entry and making what-if comparisons fast during demos and decision conversations.
• Progressive disclosure keeps dense finance readable. Complex areas (payment schedule, residual value, charter revenue/profit) stay collapsed until needed, so users can stay focused on the decision-driving numbers without losing depth.

The result is a calculator UI that supports rapid iteration, clearer walkthroughs with stakeholders, and fewer errors than spreadsheet-based workflows, especially when assumptions change mid-analysis.

Impact

• Supported growth to ~$190K ARR within 24 months
• LinkedIn growth to ~1,800 followers
• Newsletter: 40+ issues, 43%+ open rate, 3%+ CTR
• Booth design and display content for largest business aviation conference (NBAA-BACE)