Routing App
A smart, easy and efficient software for Route planning and Fleet management
OVERVIEW
Growing complexity in last-mile logistics demands professional tools to help delivery companies. With route planning software companies increase their service quality, scale their resources and reduce costs.

The difficulty is to manage the complexity and focus on the needs of the users to deliver a delightful experience.
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ROLE & DURATION

Lead Product Designer & UX
Product Thinking, Information Architecture, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & testing

Team: 2 designer, 1 manager
Feb - Nov 2019
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The Problem
Increasing complexity in last-mile logistics demands professional tools to help delivery companies. With route planning software companies increase their service quality, scale their resources and reduce costs.
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The difficulty is to manage the complexity and focus on the needs of the users to deliver a delightful experience.
Definition phase
I introduced the 5-day Design Sprint to the team and moderated the meetings to get a first idea of the App.
If you want to learn more about the methodology I recommend you the book by Jake Knapp.

During the Sprint sessions with the team we defined a main workflow and functionality scope of the App. 

User definition
Every customer has a different organization and therefore roles and job titles.
But after some consideration we could abstract three main Personas involved in the route planning. 
It’s very important for the product definition to understand the different users with their goals and tasks. 


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We identified 3 basic Personas that are common in the process:


Operations Manager
The Operations Manager is one of the most important persona. It will take the buying decision.


Tasks performed: Warehouse & Sales management, Logistics resources planning, HR, Reports to top management.

Priorities: Return on Investment, Savings and Sales increase.


Logistics planner 

The Logistics Planner is the key persona to delight with the software. He is the one that the software will help the most. But he is scared of losing control over the planning. 

Tasks performed: Order preparation, Expedition planning, customer requests and support, field operations control. 

Priorities: Software adapts to my way of working, it’s easy and gives me the full power, automatizes repetitive tasks.
Driver
The driver is usually an external company or subcontract. Usually he has the knowledge needed to fulfill the operations.

Tasks performed: Execute the deliveries in the time windows. It’s not easy to meet the deadlines because traffic and urban policies are getting more and more complicated for delivery.

Priorities: Software has to integrate with my current environment like mobile phone and existing navigation apps (Tomtom, Google maps). There is no time to lose.
Conceptualization
Based on the Concept definition and User definition I started creating information architecture and low-fi concepts for primary use cases.
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This first concepts are done as rapid prototyping on Whiteboards and paper. They are discussed with Stakeholders and iterated. 
After this iterations first screens are created in Sketch to be validated.
Concept validation

Since the beginning of the project we had a list of partners that we wanted to share our ideas first. They are experts on logistics planning who know the real challenges of the sector themselves. 

Using the method User Guided Walkthrough we could show them the first iterations of the product using InVision.
The feedback was very helpful to evolve the product.
The solution
Highway makes it very easy to plan last-mile routes and dispatch them later to the drivers. 
Compared to other solutions it strikes through a clean and responsive experience. 


Route planning the easy way

Reducing the UI to the key information makes it easier to focus on the task. 
Users like to personalize the routes after the optimization and this is very easy with drag and drop. 
Realtime warnings inform the user about the restrictions affecting the drivers or services. 

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Following the path

Dispatched routes are viewed on a Webapp for mobile devices. 
Drivers can track their progress and open navigation for next stop.
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Subscription area

Users are able to see and modify data on the subscriptions by their own.
Measure and feedback collection

We track Acquisiton and usage metrics. We have event tracking aswell on the UI to understand which features are more used. 

As the Product Designer I like to keep contact with clients and demonstrate new features with a demo. This is the best way to get feedback directly from the customers.

Metrics and feedback are discussed during the roadmap discussions. In the Roadmap we balance Business strategy together with Customer feedback.