Question
How to surface the challenges of being the first Product Designer and trying to insert reseach process in a sales-driven company?
Solution
Applying a user research process to transform an internal tool into a SaaS Transport Management System for carriers.
Bring (and invite) stakeholders to the same page (and interview meetings), showcase the milestones of the design and research process, and enhance self-resilience when things don't go exactly as expected.
Learning
This project demonstrates my direct contributions as a UX Designer and UX Researcher. The final product has many features, and while not all were designed by me, they were created by the design team I helped build. Although I provided design leadership and support, those other features will not be shown here.
A summary of the project.
I started and led the design and research process, as well as built a design team, from the beginning of 2021 until early 2023 for a small company that was acquired by Loadsmart.
During this time, I had the privilege of experiencing a fast-paced startup environment, launching a product that grew from 1 to nearly 200 customers. I designed many features based on user research, made mistakes but also learned and saw great results, and worked with an incredible team of Product Designers, Product Managers, Engineers, and various stakeholders.
Over these two years, the product evolved from an internal tool for carriers, originally named Kamion, into a brand new SaaS Transport Management System platform, now known as CarrierTMS by Loadsmart.
A snippet of the project initially being an internal tool until it becomes a Transport Management System for carriers.
Interested in reading about my design process for this project?
Please continue reading for the full case study.
The Kamion Company context
At the start of 2021, Loadsmart brought me on board as the first Product Designer for one of their recently acquired companies, Kamion Company.
Kamion Company, at that point, operated as a small trucking carrier as an in-house product, also called Kamion, solely engineered by the team.
The challenge with being the first designer
I joined the company with a mission to improve and scale Kamion from a design perspective to serve other carrier companies, as well as creating a vision that could translate future user experience in becoming a TMS (Transport Management System) for U.S.-based carriers.
As challenging as it was, being the first designer in a very early stage product - working on a startup enviroment - was something that I greatly valued as my goal was to learn how to establish a design and research process that could help us scale efficiently.
In addition to the task of establishing a design and research process, I also faced the challenge of aligning Kamion's visual identity with that of Loadsmart. It was essential to ensure that the product not only functioned seamlessly but also reflected the brand identity and values of Loadsmart, thereby enhancing cohesion across the company's offerings.
Kamion moving to the Loadsmart branding - Changing colors and name
From Kamion to CarrierTMS.
Logo and name transition.
The decision to rebrand Kamion to CarrierTMS was driven by marketing considerations, aimed at integrating it more seamlessly within Loadsmart's suite of products as it evolved.
My contribution to this transition involved leveraging and evolving Loadsmart's Design System to ensure that CarrierTMS not only adopted a new name but also maintained visual consistency with Loadsmart's branding across all touchpoints.
So the design process and solutions you'll see from here is for the Carrier TMS platform (former Kamion), as the Kamion name was discontinued over time.
Beginning with the focus on user research
Since the beginning, my approach was to bring user research to the table. Despite of being a very hard challenge that Loadsmart is a sales-driven company, I used some strategies that had helped my in the past:
• Stakeholder education and user advocacy.
• Inviting my squad to interviews and user testing.
• Alignment with business goals.
• Iterative approach with stakeholders on interview scripts and user testing tasks.
• Collaboration and communication on sharing sync and async frequent user research reports.
On the strategy part, a created an ongoing UX research initiatives to run with carrier companies so it could bring us their main pain points - carriers being our main persona. It was a variety of methods like:
• Interviewing a carrier companies at least once in a week.
• Sales pitches shadowing.
• Surveys to run in Loadsmart's Loadboard - an existing Loadsmart product focused on loads.
• Customer Success support meeting shadowing.
Demonstrating the necessity of the user research process proved to be more challenging than anticipated due to several factors:
• Many stakeholders had limited understanding of the benefits of user research in product development.
• Loadsmart has always been a sales-driven company.
• Short-term focus: Stakeholders had urgency in terms of seeing if the product could move on.
• A lot of biased opinions from stakeholders in terms of problems and solutions.
But as we progressed, I was able to identify and communicate to stakeholders the primary needs of carriers, as well as map out the essential features and functionalities that were missing in Kamion but necessary for its evolution into a Transport Management System (TMS), which would later be known as CarrierTMS.
Carrier research findings
It took me close to 3 months to talk to 15 carrier companies, studying articles about carriers, shadowing with Sales, benchmarking competitors, while onboarding as a Loadsmart employee.
In this time, I synthesized the findings into detailed research reports and shared them with stakeholders. It generated valuable discussions, feedback and alignment of who we should build the product for and how their daily work journey looked like.
Screenshots from a user research report deck. (Blurred images due to sensitive information)
Dispatcher and Onwer Operator journey.
The main pain points for carriers.
Most carriers in the U.S are used to manage their business, by using a spreadsheet-based solution.
However, our user research revealed that while this approach is commonly employed, it was also a very time consuming experience and not scalable enough to provide a simple, straightforward way to optimize dispatch, reduce empty miles and overhead costs, scale fleets, and make better business decisions with all the information they need.
Spreadsheet-based carrier management.
The user research also revealed a variety of pain points and needs among carriers, including:
• Load planning and management - Trucks being used efficiently to its potential based on specific parameters.
• Freight tracking and dispatching - for better visibility and load control.
• Route optimization - considering several factors to drive efficiency.
• Reporting - company performance.
• Accounting - organized and reliable data and process.
• Analytics - insights to help make decisions.
• Integrations - leveraging existing third party offerings.
Two years of design work for CarrierTMS to address carriers main pain points.
My contribution to the evolution of the product from an internal loads planning tool to a comprehensive SaaS Transport Management System (TMS) was grounded in several key principles and actions:
• Design Documentation and guidelines.
• Prototyping and user testing.
• Evolution of Design System.
• Handoff process to development.
• Hiring more designers - we ended up being a team of 4 designers.
Over the two years period, priorities changed - as expected from an early stage startup/product - new learnings and insights came, and the team has grown… but bellow are some of the highlights of how my direct hands on contribution as UX Designer and UX Researcher impacted users and helped the SaaS CarrierTMS evolution.
Loads planning and management
Based on user research indicating that small carrier businesses rely heavily on spreadsheets for load planning and management, I recognized the opportunity to address this pain point by enhancing the Loads section within CarrierTMS.
The goal was to streamline the process of load creation and management, saving users valuable time in dispatching time-sensitive loads.
Loads section management improvement - Carriers being able to manage, create, edit and upload their loads.
New loads section creation - Carriers being able to create, edit, attach documents and dispatch the load.
Some KPI examples we analised for performance:
• 2029 loads dispatched through CarrierTMS after one month of the release.
• Statuses and other new filters being used frequently after one month of release.
KPIs of performance after one month of release.
Freight tracking and booking
Another pain point for carriers in the logistics industry is the lack of precise tracking services, booking loads, and trust building between dipatchers and truck drivers. These user-based questions guided how the design solution should work:
• How can dispatchers book more loads?
• Is the load late or on time?
• How can carriers search for better loads considering driver's agenda?
• How can carriers have visibility of drivers' availability?
I designed a solution that allowed users to book loads from the Truckboard area, tracking loads in a map viewing experience, and knowing the location of their trucks.
Comparisson between old Kamion Truckboard and the new CarrierTMS Truckboard experience.
Even thought we had great user feedback about the Truckboard enhancement, the solution was not driving product KPIs as expected:
• Only 15.58% of load acceptance - second step of the funnel.
• Only 16.67% out of second step of load acceptance.
KPIs of performance after one month of release.
By doing more user research and user testing, I was able to identify two possible main usability issues that were contributing to the low performance:
• Users felt that by having a Search Loads button on the top of the page, they lost context about which dispatcher should own the load.
• Dispatchers were not able to know who owned the truck, so they could not search for any loads for a given truck.
• Dispatchers search and book loads for their drivers. So in a sense, the load information needs to be related to the dispatcher.
In order to tackle those problems, I incorporated the user feedback and some enhancements to the solution like:
• Add dispatchers name to the trucks table.
• Add search loads button contextual to each dispatcher.
And then we saw the performance improving.
• From 15.58% to 34.44% of load acceptance - second step of the funnel.
• From 16.67% to 74.19% out of second step of load acceptance.
KPIs of performance after one month of improvement.
Accounting invoice and factoring integration
There is plenty of room for errors and mistakes within freight billing processes. This becomes particularly clear when looking at freight invoicing.
And in the carrier context, carrier invoices have a direct relationship with Factoring companies, as carriers need them to get paid faster than they would, if they sent invoices to brokers and shippers - by law, carriers can wait from 30 to 60 days to get paid from brokers and shippers.
Our research showed us that when thinking about a Factoring integration, carriers often seek the ability to send invoices to them easily. Often, Factoring integration is one reason that carriers decide which TMS to use.
The problem definition:
Factoring is an essential service for carriers to send invoices and get paid, especially those that rely on cash flow management. The problem of limited integrations with factoring companies and the focus on simplified invoice sending are important for operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Our product's competitive advantage would be providing easy invoice submissions for every factoring company.
A seamless user experience in managing load invoices as well as sending them to the Factoring companies carriers integrate with.
• 13.28K invoices send to Factoring companies through CarrerTMS.
KPIs of performance since its launch in July 2022 until 2024.
Wrap up, results and current status
I also had the privilege of working on some other CarrierTMS enhancements not mentioned here.
By the middle of 2022, CarrierTMS had achieved significant growth that I had the opportunity to contribute to by the design process.
I also had the privilege of working on some other CarrierTMS enhancements not mentioned here.
By the middle of 2022, CarrierTMS had achieved significant growth that I had the opportunity to contribute to by the design process.
1. I need to to always remember to be a user advocate, but knowing that it's a dificult path. It takes time, energy and a lot of resilience. But it worths in the end (is there an end?)
2. When a company is very sales-drive, blending in and talking stakeholders language, is a good strategy to be heard.
3. Something it would probably do different is to take it easier on my assumptions that by only showing user quotes, stakeholders will give the buy-in. Business goals and pressure have many nuances where user needs is only one of them.
4. Market fit is not the same as having a good product. It takes much more than a good product development process for the product to succeed.
Previous project
Next project
