Paynode 2.0

OVERVIEW

Creating a best-in-class payments platform for the business aviation industry, enabling operators, brokers, and end clients to pay and get paid.

Avinode is the largest online marketplace for buying and selling air charter (private jet) services, and the leading provider of digital solutions for air charter professionals.

We were engaged by Avinode to design an end-to-end payments solution, addressing a critical gap in an industry where no such offering currently exists. To maintain market leadership and strengthen defensibility, Avinode aimed to evolve Paynode, their existing payment platform, giving users more reason to stay within their ecosystem.

We applied a Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework to understand the workflows of brokers and operators and identify gaps in their daily tasks. During the research phase, we conducted qualitative interviews with a diverse mix of users, which helped uncover the core features Paynode needed to become a best-in-class business aviation payments system.

These insights informed a feature roadmap that prioritized opportunities based on user needs—giving Avinode a clear path forward. We also assessed technical requirements and recommended complementary products and services to help bring the proposition to life.

MY ROLE

As we evolved the existing proposition, we followed the double diamond process to ensure alignment with the business strategy, taking time to understand the domain, identify the right problem, and explore potential solutions.

I partnered with the company’s internal designer, our product lead, and researcher, joining at the research-analysis stage. Together, we co-facilitated JTBD workshops and translated insights into tangible design outcomes. My responsibilities spanned UX, visual design, and prototyping for user testing.

We drew on Paynode’s previous research to extract key themes, which we then developed into jobs during the kick-off workshop. These were refined for interviews and used as the backbone of our discussion guide. Interviewees were asked to prioritise their top jobs.

From these discussions, we uncovered a number of recurring themes, which were then ranked in interviews. A clear pattern emerged: de-risking wasn’t just a single job, it was an overarching driver present at every stage of the broker and operator journey. This insight became a guiding principle for proposition design. In the end, we mapped the broker and operator journey and identified seven core Jobs to be Done.

The next stages included:

Design sprint
Proposition creation
Redesigning the user journey
UI design
Concept testing

OUTCOMES

Drawing on two rounds of customer feedback, the brand vision and lexicon, and a final design iteration, we developed a new vision, Paynode 2.0.

After three rounds of design, we produced a redesigned product with a robust feature set, along with recommended build principles for the MLP and the final proposition. The MLP would test not only the product’s functionality, but also its brand, service proposition, tone of voice, information architecture, user experience, and interface.

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