Uber Freight | Supply Chain Management
Redesigning the internal Carrier Profile to enhance operators’ experience
Role
User Research
Interaction Design
UI/UX Design
Timeline
10 weeks
Apr’23 - Jun’23
Tools
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Miro
Team
Qixuan Mai
Shaobo Zhang
Sherry Xu
Seungyeon Kim
Uber Freight, our collaboration, and my role
Uber Freight, a subsidiary of Uber Technologies, is a Supply Chain Management company (i.e. logistic solutions provider) that helps shippers of all sizes connect with carriers to to enable freight transportation. They have created the logistics industry’s most robust digital carrier network and their mission is to provide a seamless, easy to learn, and data driven experience for shipping companies and carriers.
In an academia-industry collaboration, our team of 5 designers from Northwestern University were given a real life challenge by Uber Freight. This was an incredible opportunity for us to get hands on experience to solve a problem in the complex logistics industry.
As a product designer with a year of work experience as a Lead Designer, I played a crucial role in spearheading this project and practiced effective collaboration and teamwork through multiple design sprints.
In an academia-industry collaboration, our team of 5 designers from Northwestern University were given a real life challenge by Uber Freight. This was an incredible opportunity for us to get hands on experience to solve a problem in the complex logistics industry.
As a product designer with a year of work experience as a Lead Designer, I played a crucial role in spearheading this project and practiced effective collaboration and teamwork through multiple design sprints.
The Challenge
The backbone of Uber Freight’s seamless logistics service are their internal carrier-facing operators. Among the key responsibilities for these operators are searching and verifying carriers (or drivers) based on several factors to find the most appropriate match for transporting shippers’ freight. This was quite an elaborate process that involved the use of the “Carrier Profile” tool to analyze carrier companies and drivers. However, the Carrier Profile had significant shortcomings as it was designed as a temporary solution to make ends meet during the early stages of the company’s expansion.
The operator’s needs and behaviors were not considered which led to a rigid workflow which was not user friendly. We were given the task to better understand the complex identities of freight carriers and redesign an internal carrier profile page to improve the carrier-facing operator’s service and experience.
The operator’s needs and behaviors were not considered which led to a rigid workflow which was not user friendly. We were given the task to better understand the complex identities of freight carriers and redesign an internal carrier profile page to improve the carrier-facing operator’s service and experience.
How might we
create a cohesive carrier profile that empowers carrier-facing operators and support agents with a comprehensive and useful profile to better help carriers when they contact Uber Freight?
The Solution
Our solution focussed on providing new-learners with an adequate amount of support, confidence, and motivation by leveraging the power of the huge community of learners on Athena.
01
Feature | Performance scorecards and preferences
Visual representation of a carrier’s past performance and rates along with a comparison tool to measure carrier’s performance with others. Carrier preferences provide contextual data on a carrier’s capacity and behaviors for aiding subjective decision making.
02
Feature | Expandable fixed left panel for basic carrier information
Designed a new visual layout to hold static information on carriers. The default left panel holds most important and frequently used information like carrier details, primary contact info, and links to other tools. The expanded view is used to enclose seldom used but indispensable information like carrier records and documents.
03
Feature | Redesigning features with new visual hierarchy and consistent design language
Redesigns of the carrier load table (that holds the records of the carriers past load activity) and the list of contacts to make it possible to call and track directly from the carrier portal
The Process
Sprint 1
Secondary Research : Understanding Uber Freight’s Business
During the first week, we worked closely with Uber Freight’s UX Researchers by reading vast amounts of past research to analyze and understand the complex world of logistic providers. We found Uber Freight primarily focusses on 3PL (brokerage) and 4PL (managed services). The Carrier Portal fell under the 3PL brokerage service according to which our scope was outlined.
Party logistics - 3PL
A Third-Party Logistics (3PL) service is a comprehensive outsourcing solution where a specialized fulfillment company manages various aspects of supply chain operations, including transportation, warehousing, and distribution, to optimize efficiency and reduce costs for businesses.
Load
Facility storage
Carrier
Store
Key players in the industry
01 | Shipper
They are Uber Freight’s customers that needs their freight transported
02 | Brokerage
Uber Freight- middleman, connecting customers with carriers to haul freight
03 | Carrier Company
Transportation service that moves freight from Point A →Point B
Categories
Owner operators
Small fleets
Large fleets
Extra large fleets
04 | Drivers
They work for carrier companies (or independently) who are driving the vans
Driver types based on motivation
Rate driven
Load driven
Flexibility driven
Routine driven
Initial user interviews
To understand the operator’s workflow and the nature of use of the Carrier Profile, we conducted 6 personal interviews on zoom. I played key role in preparing the discussion guide and led the discussion for 3 of these interviews.
Participants (6)
Job profile: Uber Freight Carrier Sales Team, Customer Success Team, Account Managers
Employment Status: Full time/part time employees
Prerequisite: Key users of the Carrier Profile and other integrated and UF proprietary tools
Employment Status: Full time/part time employees
Prerequisite: Key users of the Carrier Profile and other integrated and UF proprietary tools
Goals for user interviews
Understand operator’s tasks and duties on a daily basis
Identify the nature of interactions with the Carrier Profile and how it serves the operators to help them perform their actions
Observe the collaborations that the operator needs to engage in
Create a priority list of actions, information and features on the Carrier Profile
User pain points - key findings from interviews
Interaction based
01 | FINDING
Too many different internal tools
Jumping between different platforms as the Carrier Profile does not provide the operator with all the context required for tasks
02 | FINDING
Rigid user flows increase time-on-task
To perform a seemingly simple action, users are required to make several clicks to find the information.
Information based
03 | FINDING
Vital information missing
Missing information on the Carrier Profile about the carriers and drivers requires follow-up calls, usually with the dispatchers.
04 | FINDING
Inaccurate information
A lot of the information fields are not maintained and contain dated information which required clarification calls, increasing time taken
Functionality based
05 | FINDING
Inefficient features
The current [Notes & Tags] feature cannot serve the inter-team communication purpose well.
06 | FINDING
No decision making support
No filter or recommendation tool for finding a suitable carrier on their profile page.
User Journey Blueprint
Based on our observations, we created a detailed service blueprint involving every operator team and the number of primary and support actions they had to take. We then simplified the detailed blueprint based on priority of actions and consolidating relevant use cases.
After carefully analyzing the user pain points and the relevant user journeys for various use cases, we were able to identify 2 main types of users that emerge that would benefit from the Carrier Portal redesigns.
01 | INSIGHT
Information hierarchy for vital information necessary for operator actions is lacking
The backbone for operators to perform logistic tasks is information on the carriers and customers, thus it is really important for this information to have a structure that is easy to read and understand.
"I come to the Carrier Profile to take a quick look ... check if its all good to go... I have to scroll to... here...its so deep down"
~ Frances
~ Frances
02 | INSIGHT
The desired information is spread across multiple different tools and in some cases, not present at all!
In order to gather context on the carriers, operators need to refer to various different internal tools. Such data need to be captured on the Carrier Profile instead of operators creating workarounds.
"I would say Workload[Internal tool] is the source of truth...Salesforce has most relevant data...then there is Zendesk for creating tickets... yeah...Carrier Profile is secondary"
~ Brian
~ Brian
03 | INSIGHT
Underdeveloped functionality and features to aid operator workflow and decision making
The Carrier Profile tool does not provide tools that are required to analyze the information to support the operator make a decision on the carrier.
"I would really need to understand how this carrier has been performing you know... So there is no point really coming here. I would have to go to Salesforce"
~ Kate
~ Kate
Sprint 2
Affinity Mapping - sorting carrier information and operator actions
Based on the interactions with the operators, we were able to perform thematic coding of various actions, tasks and features that were carried out by most operators. We separated these into various buckets which formed the basis of our information architecture.
Information Architecture
Preliminary Design - Testing concept values
I took a lead in creating fast wireframes in order to quickly test the concepts on users. Our goal here was to ensure that the features and functionalities we arrived upon, provided value to the users.
New findings from user testing
01 | FINDING
Performance graphs run the risk of visual overload
The concept of carrier performance tracking across time was essential but was not the most frequented action. I would therefore be reveal it only when there is an intention.
02 | FINDING
Need for placing calls to carrier at any point of time
The most important function that would make the life of an operator simpler was the ability to place calls from this page instead of searching for contact information on other tools.
03 | FINDING
Unnecessary data increases scrolling
Some information like the approvals, processes, documents was hardly ever referred to hence, if they could be hidden from the view, it would reduce the need to scroll
Design Feedback from Uber Freight mentors
01 | CRITIQUE
Perform accessibility checks for appropriate contrast
The graphs introduced a lot of colored lines which could be harder to differentiate from each other. This could in turn cause wrong inferences to be drawn from the graphs.
02 | CRITIQUE
Create visual consistency with Uber’s Base Design System
While creating the final designs - it was advised that we keep in mind the design language of the Uber design system to maintain consistency with other Uber internal tools.
Designing for visual and informational hierarchy
From the testing and feedback session we realized the need for sorting information based on priority along with visual sorting for the same. In order to help operators find relevant information in their designated information blocks, we iterated upon several layouts to represent the information architecture and finally decided upon the one shown below.
High fidelity Designs
Based on the highly useful feedback provided by Uber Freight’s mentors and operators, we strengthened our concepts and worked on creating consistency with other Uber products using the Base Design System. I took a lead in refining all the feature UI and creating performance graph interactions.
Basic Carrier Information
Performance Scorecard
User Data and Preferences
Next Steps
Although we presented our final concepts to our clients at the end of 10 weeks, we wanted to achieve a lot more to test our final concepts which needed further work. However, in the interest of time we presented some key next steps for the R&D team that would work on this in the future.
Periodic verification and document expiry reminders
By hiding excess information in a collapsable window, we made that information less accessible. In order to make sure these documents are not forgotten, timely reminders to keep a check on these would be necessary
By hiding excess information in a collapsable window, we made that information less accessible. In order to make sure these documents are not forgotten, timely reminders to keep a check on these would be necessary
Pressure testing the usability and accessibility of the graph features
While we tried our best to use the base design system and check for color contrast issues, testing the performance graph features in a real scenario would be important to find hidden interaction problems.
While we tried our best to use the base design system and check for color contrast issues, testing the performance graph features in a real scenario would be important to find hidden interaction problems.
Learnings and Takeaways
Overall my experience working with one of the biggest tech giant’s most challenging product was a super exciting and gratifying. I was proud of our team that was able to still achieve our target and impress Uber Designer at the final presentation. This journey rewarded me with some valuable learnings.
Understanding the business helps understand the user
The biggest learning I had in the 3 months is that Freight Industry is extremely complex and half of the operators’ challenges pertained to navigating in this space. Once we understood the business ourselves, we understood their actions and intentions more clearly
When double diamond fails - feedback prevails
In the real world, using ideal double diamond approach in not the best way to address a design problem. Multiple interviews and testing sessions take a lot of planning and organizing time. In such cases - getting critiques and feedback from other designers become extremely important to move forward fast.
