subscription management

overview

Caravelo powers subscription programmes for airlines. Its Subscription Management Platform is the back-office tool used to manage subscribers, plans, payments, and day-to-day operations.

It has two groups of users: airline partner teams, and Caravelo’s own operations team. The second group only existed because the platform lacked self-service capabilities — Caravelo’s team routinely had to perform actions on partners’ behalf.

problem

I audited the platform through heuristic evaluation and contextual inquiry, and ran a competitive analysis of leading SaaS platforms to understand where it was falling short.

discovery

I led the design end to end alongside PMs and engineers. I ran 6 interviews and contextual inquiries — 3 with Caravelo’s internal team and 3 with airline partner clients — which revealed recurring frustration around fragmented workflows and lack of control. I synthesised the findings into journey maps, capability clusters, and a revised information architecture, redefining navigation around user goals rather than legacy system logic.

Hypothesis: autonomy scales better than support

Every action that needs a support ticket is a bottleneck for partners and a cost for Caravelo. Giving users integrated, self-service workflows reduces operational load, improves visibility, and makes the platform easier to scale to new airline partners.

design decisions

One principle guided everything: organise the platform around what users need to do, not how the system was built.

• Navigation built around user goals

  The reworked information architecture simplified navigation and reduced workflow complexity, replacing structures that mirrored legacy system logic.

• Core actions, in one place

  Streamlined flows let users complete subscription actions directly in the platform, replacing Kaui, Kill Bill, and Jira for day-to-day work.

• Self-service by default

  New self-service capabilities let airline partners handle key workflows themselves, instead of relying on Caravelo’s ops team to act on their behalf.

• Building on what already existed

  I audited existing components and extended Veloair, Caravelo’s B2C design system, to the platform, reusing 48 of its 70 components and adding the B2B-specific patterns it was missing.

• Designed for implementation

  High-fidelity interfaces were shaped around technical and integration constraints, so they were developer-ready from the start.

validation

Designs were reviewed with the same internal team members and airline partner clients from the initial interviews, alongside ongoing critiques with PMs and engineers, keeping decisions grounded in both user value and feasibility.

• Payments & billing

  Support teams needed to check transactions and documents side by side when helping customers. → We merged payments and billing into a single section to make customer support more efficient.

• Chargebacks

  Bringing chargeback flows into the platform proved too complex for the scope. → Instead, we embedded the existing tool (Stripe) within the internal platform, so users could still handle them without leaving it.

challenges & trade-offs

• Legacy architecture

  Existing technologies constrained interaction patterns and slowed iteration. Rather than designing idealised experiences, I worked closely with engineers to balance usability improvements with what could realistically be built.

• Third-party integrations

  Several workflows depended on API integrations, which brought technical complexity and shifting requirements. Continuous collaboration with engineering helped align scope, validate feasibility, and adapt designs without compromising core user goals.

impact

• Less support dependency

  Support tickets dropped by 27% in the first 6 months, as self-service capabilities shifted key workflows away from Caravelo’s ops team and gave partners more visibility and control.

• Core actions, in-platform

  Users could complete core subscription actions directly in the platform, replacing 3 external tools.

• A scalable foundation

  Extending the design system improved consistency and sped up product development going forward.