Aerovy Mobility Inc.

From early 2023 through early 2025, I led the product design vision and UX system development across Aerovy’s three core platforms—Scout, Spectra, and OEM 360—guiding each from concept to deployed product.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. The information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Aerovy Mobility Inc.

Redesigning How Airports Understand Energy, Mobility, and Infrastructure

Airports are becoming electrified faster than anyone expected.
Electric ground support equipment (GSE), EV rental fleets, microgrids, renewables, autonomous vehicles, and eventually — eVTOL aircraft.

Yet every operator told us the same thing:

“I know everything about airplanes.
I know nothing about my energy.”

What started as an academic siting model for eVTOL vertiports evolved into a full energy orchestration and fleet operations platform used across continents. Over two years, I led the product design vision that transformed Aerovy from a speculative mobility startup into a deployment-ready infrastructure company.

This case study is the story of how we discovered that truth — and designed the systems to solve it.

My Role

From early 2023 through early 2025, I led the product design vision and UX system development across Aerovy’s three core platforms—Scout, Spectra, and OEM 360—guiding each from concept to deployed product.

I worked side-by-side with the CEO to shape product strategy, conduct customer discovery, and evolve the design language across multiple pivots. My role spanned:

  • Defining experience frameworks for multi-site infrastructure planning, energy orchestration, and fleet operations

  • Designing end-to-end interfaces across web applications, including topology maps, forecasting dashboards, and asset management flows

  • Conducting user research with airports, OEMs, utilities, and vertiport companies across four continents

  • Building scalable design systems to unify DER orchestration, spatial topology, and operational workflows

  • Supporting business development with prototypes, investor narratives, and customer-specific demonstrations

By the end of my tenure, Aerovy’s platforms had evolved from an academic research concept into a deployed, revenue-generating electrification suite used by international operators.

The Kickoff

From Academic Research to Commercial Product

Aerovy’s earliest foundation came from research developed at Purdue University. Our team’s first product prototype AATLAS blended

  • commuter flows

  • demographic clustering

  • mobility demand

  • utility infrastructure adjacency

to identify and compare high-potential eVTOL vertiport locations.


In the beginning, the assumption across the industry was:

“Vertiports will form the new mobility network — and someone needs to design where they go.”

Our mission seemed clear, build the siting tool for the early vertiport ecosystem.

Based on that assumption, we built Scout V1, a product initially pitched to vertiport developers and OEMs planning the first urban air mobility networks.

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Early traction was promising:

  • partnerships with leading vertiport companies

  • strategic airport and OEM partners in Japan, Western Europe, and Australia

  • recognized legitimacy in the AAM industry

But working with operators on the cutting edge of real-world deployments expanded Scout’s mandate. We needed system-scale visibility, not just siloed sites.

Early Field Insights

My Role

Scale Wasn’t a Feature. It Was the Product.

Vertiport companies didn’t want a location.
They wanted network-scale reasoning.

They asked for:

  • redundancy planning

  • demand corridors

  • feeder network optimization

  • region-wide utility feasibility

  • constraints across dozens or hundreds of possible sites

Scout needed to evolve from a siting tool to a network intelligence engine.

The Discovery

FROM AVIATION TO INFRASTRUCTURE

Our initial prototypes were focused on eVTOL scheduling and charging. But user feedback across regional airports in California, Indiana, and Western Australia exposed deeper pain points:

  • Airports were risk-averse real estate operators, not technology testbeds.

  • Executives needed visibility into cost recovery and energy ROI.

  • Operators were overwhelmed by alarms and manual coordination.

  • Managers lacked unified tools for tenant billing and sustainability reporting.

Insight 1 – Energy Visibility Is the New Infrastructure

Field research made clear that before airports could adopt new vehicles, they needed control of their energy systems.
Spectra pivoted to serve as a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) that connected chargers, batteries, HVAC, and solar under a single cloud interface.

Insight 2 – Fleet Management Is the Bridge

During conversations with a major Midwestern logistics hub, we realized the most immediate electrification opportunity wasn’t aircraft—it was ground support equipment (GSE) and enterprise fleets.

The hub’s shipping partners were all exploring fleet electrification, and needed shared-use charging, uptime tracking, and billing tools.
This became the genesis of OEM 360, a platform enabling manufacturers to offer fleet analytics and software subscriptions alongside hardware.

These insights reframed Aerovy’s mission: electrification before aviation.

We pivoted from managing vehicle turnarounds to orchestrating distributed energy resources (DERs) — chargers, batteries, solar arrays, and HVAC — as one system.

Placeholder visual: diagram showing airport → GSE fleet → OEM 360 workflow.

The Vision

Energy Management for the Next Generation of Mobility

The goal became clear: build the digital control layer for electrified infrastructure.
Spectra would serve as the unified cloud platform for orchestrating power across airports and fleets, while Scout would model new infrastructure investments and OEM 360 would empower EV manufacturers with operational SaaS.

Our ambition was to replace fragmented utilities and spreadsheets with a coherent, human-centered operating system for energy.

💡 Visual Placeholder: System architecture diagram linking AATLAS → Scout → Spectra → OEM 360.

Frameworks That Guided Design

Jobs to Be Done

We redefined product success around user outcomes, not features.

  • Executives: recover energy costs, forecast demand, ensure compliance.

  • Managers: maintain uptime, manage leases, optimize DER assets.

  • Operators: respond to faults faster, track energy distribution safely.

This job alignment guided every feature, from dashboard summaries to maintenance alerts.

Systems Thinking

Each layer of Aerovy’s platform—data ingestion, visualization, finance—was interdependent.
We built causal maps showing how telemetry data influenced operational and financial outcomes.

This approach helped prevent siloed decisions and allowed us to design a living system, not isolated tools.

Service Blueprinting

We mapped how a single event (like resolving a charger fault) cascaded through the organization:
operations logs updated, invoices recalculated, and sustainability metrics refreshed automatically.
This blueprinting process turned user empathy into enterprise logic.

Human-Centered Systems Design

Designing for airports meant balancing clarity under stress with compliance and control.
We layered complexity behind progressive disclosure, making critical information visible but never overwhelming.

A technician could act within seconds; an executive could understand impact in minutes.

Design Ops & Atomic Design System

To unify Aerovy’s multi-product suite, I built an atomic component library shared across all platforms.
It standardized UI language, improved accessibility, and reduced engineering overhead—enabling consistent design delivery across continents.

The Framework In Action

Scout — Predictive Planning

Derived from Purdue’s AATLAS research, Scout used demographic and commuter data to simulate future eVTOL demand and DER infrastructure needs.
It modeled site viability, power access, and ROI—transforming academic algorithms into actionable business intelligence.

Spectra — Unified Orchestration

Spectra evolved into the central cloud interface for managing distributed energy resources.

  • Combined abstract data dashboards and geospatial maps.

  • Enabled automated billing and load balancing using APIs like UtilityAPI and OCPP.

  • Incorporated smart meter integrations for legacy facilities.

  • Introduced role-based access controls to meet NIST and FAA cybersecurity standards.

OEM 360 — Fleet Software as a Service

Insight from a major Midwest logistics hub reframed our focus toward enterprise fleet management.
Their goal was to electrify ground support equipment (GSE) across multiple shipping partners.
We built OEM 360 to enable OEMs to offer fleet analytics, usage tracking, and billing dashboards directly to customers — turning hardware sales into SaaS revenue.

🖼️ Visual Placeholder: Three product visuals — Scout (simulation view), Spectra (DER orchestration UI), OEM 360 (fleet dashboard).

Scaling Challenges

Scaling Challenges

Designing across infrastructure, security, and policy was as much diplomacy as design.
Here’s how we met six key challenges.

1. Data Model Complexity

  • Unified disparate DER data into a single normalized schema.

  • Built abstraction layers to handle inconsistent APIs, timestamps, and units.

  • Added anomaly detection to prevent corrupted billing.

2. UI Scalability

  • Designed modular dashboards that adapted to user role and device.

  • Created responsive layouts bridging map-based and analytic contexts.

  • Reduced clutter by surfacing KPIs contextually to each workflow.

3. Security & Compliance

  • Introduced role-based visibility and secure logging for operational access.

  • Embedded security heuristics into UI (e.g., visual cues for restricted data).

  • Proposed API flagging and smart-meter retrofits for non-networked systems.

4. Organizational Buy-In

  • Used stakeholder mapping to identify influence networks inside each airport.

  • Developed custom prototypes for execs, operators, and utilities.

  • Demonstrated ROI alignment between regulatory, operational, and financial goals.

5. Hardware Limitations

  • Partnered with hardware vendors to design retrofit smart meters.

  • Enabled early deployments even at airports without IoT infrastructure.

  • Proved digital value before major capital expenditures were made.

6. Product Expansion

  • Refactored data models to treat all assets as DER-agnostic.

  • Adapted UI and units for seaports, universities, and Indonesian grid contexts.

  • Created scalable architecture for future sectors beyond aviation.

⚙️ Visual Placeholder: Grid of six cards—each representing one scaling challenge, with mini diagrams.

The Execution

From flying taxis to distributed energy orchestration [placeholder]

Our process was iterative, cross-disciplinary, and global.
We built, tested, and deployed in rapid loops, combining deep technical collaboration with stakeholder storytelling.

  • Wireframing & Prototyping: over 50 iterations across Spectra and Scout.

  • User Testing: with 6 airports, 2 OEM partners, and 1 university utility.

  • Cross-Functional Delivery: coordinated design with engineers and consultants.

  • Business Development Support: designed investor decks and sales demos that helped close Aerovy’s $800K pre-seed round.

By 2024, we had evolved from simulation software to a deployable enterprise platform.

🎥 Visual Placeholder: Sequence of prototypes evolving into live dashboards.

The Vision

A scalable platform for electrification and beyond

With these insights, we set a clear vision:

  • Build Spectra, a platform to unify DERs—chargers, batteries, microgrids, HVAC, and more—into one scalable control system.

  • Design interfaces flexible enough to serve both executives (abstract dashboards, financial summaries) and operators (spatial, location-based device maps).

  • Position Aerovy as a cross-industry electrification platform—valuable not just for airports and vertiports, but also for seaports, mobility hubs, and electric fleet operators.

This vision led to three major outcomes:

  1. First real-world deployments → including a revenue-generating launch in Indonesia.

  2. Global partnerships → with airport, vertiport, and infrastructure partners across four continents (Japan, Australia, U.S., and more).

  3. Expansion into OEM SaaS → with OEM 360, enabling electric vehicle manufacturers to offer white-labeled fleet management software and unlock SaaS revenue margins.

By reframing our work around electrification rather than speculative eVTOL operations, we created a product suite that addressed present-day customer needs while preserving relevance for the future of mobility.

The Service

From prototypes to deployed platforms

Out of our discovery and vision came three core platforms:

  1. Spectra – An energy orchestration system that unified distributed energy resources (DERs) such as chargers, batteries, HVAC, and microgrids. Its interface supported multiple mental models:

    • Abstract dashboards for executives, summarizing cost, revenue, and system health.

    • Spatial layouts for operators, showing physical orientation of devices across facilities for faster troubleshooting and reduced time-to-resolution (TTR).

  2. Scout – A simulation and planning tool for airports and mobility hubs to model future electrification needs. Scout helped stakeholders forecast demand, size infrastructure, and justify capital expenditures.

  3. OEM 360 – A white-labeled fleet management platform for electric vehicle manufacturers. It allowed OEMs to monetize their vehicles with SaaS offerings, giving their customers dashboards for fleet health, utilization, billing, and charging data.

By mid-2024, Aerovy had its first revenue-generating deployment in Indonesia, with OEM 360 as the spearhead product. Meanwhile, Spectra and Scout remained strategic differentiators for airports and energy-sensitive partners across four continents.

The Framework

Designing systems that scale across industries

The complexity of these platforms demanded a robust design framework:

  • Multi-tiered user research → We mapped needs across executives, managers, and operators, ensuring the platforms worked at both macro (financial and regulatory) and micro (on-site operational) levels.

  • Flexible UI systems → I developed a design language capable of representing DERs in both abstract data dashboards and spatial, facility-oriented maps, accommodating everything from financial rollups to physical asset tracking.

  • Revenue-aligned insights → My research showed airports were motivated more by operational cost reduction and lease revenue visibility than by futuristic vehicle turnaround. This shifted our product framing toward DER unification and financial reporting, ensuring the platform spoke to actual business incentives.

  • Scalable design systems → I created component libraries and interaction patterns, ensuring consistency across Spectra, Scout, and OEM 360, and enabling faster iteration as we entered new industries like seaports and mobility hubs.

This framework allowed us to adapt Aerovy’s platforms to very different customers — from Indonesian OEMs to U.S. hub airports — without fragmenting the core design language.

The Execution

From concept to real-world deployment

My execution spanned the entire design lifecycle, from early prototypes to live deployments:

  • Prototyping & Iteration → Built wireframes, hi-fi mockups, and interactive prototypes to test flows with stakeholders.

  • Cross-functional collaboration → Worked hand-in-hand with engineering on implementation handoffs, with the CEO on investor and customer presentations, and with consultants on validating infrastructure requirements.

  • Scaling the team → Helped grow Aerovy’s headcount from 4 to 10, including managing a business consulting team that reported directly to me.

  • Strategic materials → Designed investor decks, conference presentations, and direct sales collateral that supported Aerovy’s $800K pre-seed raise and subsequent global partnerships.

  • Deployment & Delivery → Oversaw the design and completion of Spectra and OEM 360 through to first customer deployments, making Aerovy a revenue-generating business for the first time.

By threading design tightly with business development and engineering execution, I ensured Aerovy’s products were not just visionary but also practical, deployable, and revenue-aligned.

The Impact

From early vision to global deployments

Despite resource constraints, the design work delivered meaningful outcomes:

  • Successful pre-seed raise ($800K) → Investor storytelling and design collateral directly supported Aerovy’s funding at an $11M valuation, with backing from Purdue Innovates, M25, Flywheel Fund, and incubation with a top-20 VC.

  • Team growth → Helped scale the company from 4 to 10 members, including leading a consulting team of 12 business students who reported to me during critical phases.

  • Strategic partnerships across 4 continents → Supported business development with airports in the U.S., vertiport developers in Japan, energy partners in Australia, and OEM deployments in Indonesia.

  • Revenue generation → Brought Aerovy to its first revenue-generating deployment with OEM 360 in Indonesia, transitioning the company from R&D into active commercial operations.

  • Media recognition → Aerovy was featured in Business Insider, TechPoint, and M25’s investment blog as a leader in digital operations for advanced air mobility.

Reflections

Designing for real-world infrastructure

Working on Aerovy taught me that designing complex B2B SaaS systems isn’t only about the interface — it’s about understanding how financial, operational, and technical incentives overlap.

  • What executives want: clear financial insights and risk reduction.

  • What operators need: simple tools that reduce troubleshooting time.

  • What partners demand: extensible, white-labeled solutions that scale.

By translating these layers into flexible design systems, I was able to help Aerovy evolve from a narrow eVTOL infrastructure startup into a company with real deployments, global partnerships, and SaaS-aligned revenue potential.

The Validation

Testing in the field

Once we had functional prototypes and early deployments, validation became critical. Because Aerovy’s platforms spanned multiple user tiers — from C-suite executives to field technicians — testing required different methods at each layer:

  • Conferences & pilots → We used industry conferences and pilot proposals with airports to test messaging and workflows with real decision-makers. This highlighted that our early AAM-focused framing (supporting eVTOL turnaround and aircraft scheduling) was less compelling than DER unification and revenue visibility.

  • Operational testing → With regional airports and international partners, we validated operator-level flows: error reporting, device orientation, and system troubleshooting. These sessions emphasized the need for faster time-to-resolution (TTR) and clear spatial mapping of devices.

  • Revenue feedback loops → Early deployments of OEM 360 in Indonesia showed customers valued white-labeled SaaS features — billing, fleet dashboards, and utilization reporting — as direct business enablers. This validated the pivot from aviation-exclusive software to a broader OEM-first strategy.

We also discovered pain points that forced iteration:

  • Operators struggled with data overload → led to granular filtering and summarized reporting.

  • Executives cared about lease revenue and operating costs, not technical DER details → led to tiered views with financial rollups.

  • Partners demanded extensibility across industries → pushed us to abstract the design language so it could scale from airports to seaports, mobility hubs, and beyond.