Case study Spacetime

Spacetime is a satellite network orchestration platform built by Aalyria to manage high-speed, high-altitude communications across land, sea, air, and space.

Spacetime by Aalyria

About Spacetime

Spacetime is a temporospatial SDN (Software Defined Network) platform that orchestrates high-speed communications across land, sea, air, and space. Built by Aalyria, it enables real-time coordination of steerable directional beams, dynamically optimizing link topologies based on mission-critical service needs.

Project overview

Key Design Challenges

As part of the design team, I worked to improve the usability and clarity of this highly complex system - supporting integration workflows for current customers, shaping a polished demo experience for prospective partners, and envisioning scalable UX for future production users. Some of the key challenges I focused on were:

  • Spacetime needed to serve multiple audiences at once: active customers, prospects, and future users at scale
  • Users needed clarity without being overwhelmed by dense or irrelevant technical data
  • The product required thoughtful hierarchy to support various user stories—ranging from situational awareness to deep debugging

Layering Information by Context

Spacetime visualizes a dynamic satellite network with multiple levels of data: high-level overviews, individual node details, and time-dependent technical data. To make this complexity usable, I worked with the team to identify key operator use cases and map them to three layers of interaction:

  • High-level network view
  • Node / entity-specific insight
  • Detailed view for troubleshooting and historical analysis
Spacetime Layering Information by Context

High-level network view for situational awareness

At this level, operators need a broad view of the full network—what's working, what's not, and whether external factors like weather are causing disruptions.

Design Focus:

  • Clear visual indicators for to reflect link fulfillment states
  • Minimal UI that emphasizes the map as the core interaction space

Info panel for entity-specific insight

The info panel provided a snapshot of a specific platform's status, key metrics, and network relationships.

Design Focus:

  • Surface relevant data without overwhelming the map view
  • Easy navigation between related nodes
  • Visualization of its role within the larger network
  • Clear path to drill down into historical data or timeline view

Details panel for troubleshooting and historical analysis

For operators diagnosing issues or reviewing past events, the interface needed to handle time-based complexity.

Design Focus:

  • Gantt-style timelines showing key events
  • Scrollable, digestible breakdowns of historical data
  • A flexible panel system that revealed time-dependent data without cluttering the primary interface

Outcomes and Impact

Supported multiple audiences by designing a layered interface that addressed both real-time operator workflows and demo needs, while laying the foundation for scalable UX in future versions.

  • Improved clarity by surfacing the right data at the right time, reducing information overload without compromising depth
  • Established a clear hierarchy through spatial, node-level, and detailed views, enabling users to move smoothly between high-level monitoring and deep technical debugging
  • Enabled faster iteration by maintaining a UI guide that improved design-engineering collaboration, helping the team adapt quickly as the product evolved