Truck driver support application
Makes a truck driver support team more efficient and productive.Discovery
A transportation and logistics company had a team that addressed various truck driver concerns (such as vacation requests, mitigating potentially late deliveries, etc.). The team mentioned to my company that handling these concerns (cases) took longer than ideal in part because of the software they used, and also because it was difficult to get new staff members. A team that included myself, a product owner, and business analyst established that we wanted to build a new tool to reduce case time (increase efficiency). I researched how the Truck Driver Support team did their day-to-day tasks. I virtually shadowed three employees. I then visited the support team onsite. What was eye-opening was that team members often had three or four displays to support their work. One user said he could use yet another. They switched often between a variety of ten to twelve applications, including command-based interfaces and Google Maps. Users complained that such switching is cognitively taxing and inefficient. Also the work environment is loud and users sometimes interact with upset drivers. Thus, the need for reducing cognitive load is even more important.
Design
After the visit, I created a user flow of the support team. I then looked at design opportunities to reduce the number of applications they had to use. I then collaborated with a business analyst, developers, and product owner to create a solution that enhanced the support team's workflows. One idea that we landed on was embedding soft phone functionality into the main application. I optimized the design at 1280 pixels wide because the support team usually had their applications at a high resolution. Nevertheless I created a responsive design in the event users want to fit more applications in the screen with the application. There are copy links which are shortcuts to entering various IDs into other systems, reducing cognitive load.
Implementation
I interacted with a team of developers to bring my team's vision to life. The main artifacts for them was a Figma prototype and a screen flow diagram. I made sure what was being implemented was faithful to the design. Also, we had discussions if a certain feature was difficult to implement. In once case, I changed the design of a date/time selector widget to one that was easier to build, without sacrificing usability.