Research & process

The load board looked like a spreadsheet from another decade. Carriers sit on the phone with customers, flipping through hundreds of loads and a pile of tabs, trying to find one shipping detail before the other person gets impatient.

I started with interviews and dozens of wires and flow maps. A carrier’s day touches more systems than you’d think, and they’re switching context the whole time. I needed that map before I changed the board.

The useful part was sitting next to them on live calls. I watched what they did, not just what they told me. They’d say a feature mattered and then never touch it — they’d use a workaround instead. That became the design brief.

It’s a desktop job, so I skipped mobile-first and designed for the workstation. Each version went back to carriers at their desks the same week. We threw away a few complete layouts. Interviews hadn’t caught what those sessions did.