EverFreight

Position: Product Designer Team: CEO, COO, Product Manager, Developer

Exploring Workflow Automation in Freight Shipping

EverFreight was founded with the goal of streamlining and automating workflow within the Freight Shipping Industry. As the current process of freight coordination is conducted across many platforms, EverFreight’s founders are looking to establish a more simple and unified location to accomplish freight shipping tasks. The EverFreight MVP explores new ways to connect all parties involved in the shipping process, through software that provides Shippers, Carriers, and Drivers with an effortless tool to speed up their work and greatly reduce error and risk.

UX Process

Understanding Shippers, Carriers, and Drivers

To better understand the workflow of each user-type: Shipper, Carrier, and Driver - User interviews were conducted to breakdown the shipment process and identify the pain-points in each user flow. The following pain-point focuses were taken from interviewing each user:

• Shipper - Very time consuming to find the best rate for their shipment. Does not want to shop around too much, risking a late delivery for a good price.
• Carrier - Struggles to minimize dead miles for each truck, and is overwhelmed by fleet size and cross platform workflow. Has a hard time managing trucks when not physically in the office.
• Driver (Fleet) - Trouble navigating and adapting to constant changes in route due to accidents and weather conditions.
• Driver (Owner) - Difficult to find work, and makes less income per trip when working with brokers.

Planning Initial Features With Primary User Goals

To create a lean MVP product, we selected a feature-set that solved the largest pain points for each user. Our features were focused on enabling the following tasks:

• Shipper - Shipment posting and management
• Carrier - Fleet management and tracking
• Driver - Freight pairing and (map) navigation

A Unified Location for Shipment Tasks

After better understanding user goals we focused on creating a user experience that unified the location for all of the shipment tasks, and automated much of the manual backend operations and coordination of pairing freight shipments with drivers.

In-Meeting Sketches to High-Fidelity Mockups

Initial designs were made in low-fidelity and assembled into InVision prototypes to determine if concept design was both in-line with user goals and stakeholder requirements. Content organization took modular (card) form in order make heavy sets of data easy for users to consume, while also making design, development, and the user’s experience more fluid across mobile and web platforms. After testing the low-fidelity app, revisions were made in areas that were confusing to users, and we backlogged features identified as too expensive from stakeholders for MVP. During the testing and revision process we made sure user goals were not sacrificed by restrictions and changes requested by Product Management, before moving forward with high-fidelity visual design.

Brand ID & User Interface

Modular UI for Cross Platform Users, and Simple Branding to Create Industry Trust

To begin creating ideas for EverFreight’s branding, we researched existing branding patterns to understand common elements across multiple brands in the freight industry. Since the EF product is technologically advanced in its industry, we decided on a badge design and typeface that both communicated simplicity and trust. Our main focus was to create an identity that existing shippers, drivers, and carriers could see as a trusted partner for their operations. In-App color accents such as vibrant blues and greens were chosen to speed-up and ease scanning, allowing users to identify certain activities by color rather than requiring them to read. Since freight operations contains a heavy cognitive load of data, our bold color selection, typeface weight and color, and organization through card design were all chosen to organize and guide the consumption information across both web and mobile interfaces.

Concluding Thoughts

Through conducting interviews with each user-type, we were able to understand the most important and difficult areas in each user’s workflow. By understanding the cross-platform strain that each user experienced on a daily basis, our software solutions were directed toward creating a unified, simple, and also automated workflow. By focusing closely on the minimum requirements to streamline the shipping process, we were able to implement a very clear set of features for the MVP, and postpone larger features for post-financing updates. Moving forward, testing the MVP with a small sized freight fleet and a small shipper will allow us to better understand and make adjustments to the platform to best fit our user’s needs.