PROCESS

Understanding the client's business needs and pain points is critical to building a contextual framework for developing the ultimate solution. I find that drilling down to find the root causes of a problem is one of the most fun parts of any development work. 

​

For this project, the client was struggling with driver dissatisfaction with their driver portal website. While the portal offered all the tools a driver would need to retrieve payroll, mileage, and load assignments, users often avoided using the site, preferring instead to call in to dispatchers or the payroll department to find answers their questions. This usually meant that staff available to speak to drivers on the phone was rarely a match for the call volume coming in to the business.

​

Surveys were sent out to the driver fleet to get feedback on the current portal. We measured the number of visits per week, which tools were most used, and satisfaction ratings on ease of use, quality of information, and how it compared to competitor tools.

If I'm redesigning an existing solution, I will fully immerse myself in it's current workings. I perform a  thorough top to bottom analysis of the existing features and functionality to understand how users interact with the product. Anything the end-user struggles with, I want to experience firsthand.

​

In this case, I was definitely feeling the pain. Frequently used tools were buried under a mountain of menus. All data was presented in table format. Links to outdated company initiatives were sprinkled throughout. And worst, the site was in no way responsive.

​

​

Studying usage analytics, whether for a website or an app, provides valuable insight into which parts of a solution are valuable and receive the most activity and which parts lead to user abandonment.

​

We were able to establish pretty quickly which tools the drivers used most often. However, more critically important was the discovery that the overwhelming majority of site traffic was coming from mobile devices. While mobile workers using cell phones to access the site wasn't exactly a divine revelation, it did demonstrate that a mobile-first redesign of the driver portal would go a long way toward improving the user experience. 

Assessing competitors strengths and weaknesses can help identify targets for market disruption and features that will attract new users.

​

The competition for driver-facing mobile apps was surprisingly minimal. Visibility into those tools was equally limited. However, this gave the team an opportunity to develop an industry-leading platform for professional drivers to find all the info they needed on the road.

Before jumping into design, ​it's critical to take time to understand who is using the product and what makes them tick. Business requirements are important, but building empathy with the people using your design on a daily basis will result in a much more successful solution.

​

The main users of the dashboard would obviously be drivers, but drivers come from all walks of life and have different goals in mind when they pick up their devices. We used digital surveys and in-person interviews with drivers to understand their needs and how they used the existing website. We used those interviews to create a series of "driver personas" and followed up with journey maps of the existing processes to identify opportunities for improvement.