Streamlining the enigma
Enhancing supply chain visibility and empowering clients with actionable insights.
TL:DR
In this case study, I led the design of Zencargo’s ‘Journey’ feature, enhancing supply chain visibility and empowering clients with actionable insights.
Through user research and iterative testing, I showcased my skills in user-centred design and problem-solving.
Cross-functional collaboration ensured stakeholder engagement, leading to significant outcomes:
92% transshipment visibility,
85% route progress insights,
48% reduction in support queries.
Zencargo
Sep 2022
5 months
Large
Design lead
Discovery,
User research,
UX design,
UI design,
Prototyping,
User testing.
Created for
Date
Duration
Effort
Role
Deliverables
Background
At Zencargo, we revolutionised B2B SaaS freight forwarding by prioritising our customers' need for enhanced supply chain visibility.
Faced with the challenge of navigating through the traditionally opaque logistics landscape, our mission was clear. “Empower our clients to make informed decisions by shedding light on every step of their cargo's journey.”
Brief
As our platform evolved, we shifted from a single code base to a microservices approach, aiming to build a best-in-class solution for supply chain visibility. This transformation supports our vision of creating a ‘digital twin’ that mirrors real-world supply chain events, enhancing both operational efficiency and scalability.
For the business, this approach reinforces our commitment to providing a leading-edge platform, capable of adapting to complex logistics needs. For users, it means a more intuitive presentation of cargo movement data, bridging functionality gaps in tracking, and seamlessly integrating new data points to improve visibility and empower decision-making at every stage of the supply chain.
Kicking off
In collaboration with project manager
& engineering lead.
We kicked off with a workshop to solidify our approach, set expectations, and refine our communication strategy.
A planning document served as our ‘source of truth’, capturing problems, goals, scope, metrics, and more, making it easy for anyone to jump into the project.
This ‘living document’ evolved each sprint, helping us stay aligned on roles, deliverables, and expectations for smooth collaboration.
Knowns,
assumptions
& unknowns
In collaboration with project manager & engineering lead.
We kicked off with a workshop to solidify our approach, set expectations, and refine our communication strategy.
Our first step in discovery was to capture and validate long-standing business assumptions alongside any knowns and unknowns, forming the foundation of our research plan.
By prioritising known factors and addressing assumptions and unknowns based on risk, we aimed to mitigate issues early and build confidence in our solution. This groundwork shapes our research, allowing us to tackle uncertainties effectively and inform our planning.
Mapping journeys
In collaboration domain experts & project manager.
We began mapping supply chains and their data points to identify current pain points, quickly realising the vast range of variations made this a massive task with no clear “golden path.”
To tackle this, we used real data and consulted domain experts to catch unusual edge cases. This approach deepened our understanding, highlighted pain points, and revealed platform gaps, guiding us toward better meeting user needs.
Playback &
alignment
In collaboration with the project manager.
Aligning the team and stakeholders around user insights was vital to our success. By sharing key user feedback such as the need for accurate tracking estimates, control over booking schedules, and a clear visual journey we built empathy and secured buy-in.
Hypotheses and goals kept everyone focused, ensuring each decision supported a best-in-class solution that met both user expectations and business objectives.
Success metrics
TRANSSHIPMENT VISIBILITY
Achieve 80% visibility of all transshipment journeys on the Shipment Details Page, enabling customers to track their cargo seamlessly, even through complex handoffs.
CARGO LEVEL DETAIL
Display cargo-level route progress for 70% of journeys, providing customers with detailed insights to anticipate arrivals and make informed decisions.
DELAY TRANSPARENCY
Link 70% of new delay reasons to specific delays and durations within the UI, improving communication and reducing customer frustration.
MILESTONE MAPPING
Map 95% of real-world milestones to ensure comprehensive journey oversight for customers, leveraging the adaptability of the new journey configuration.
REDUCED SUPPORT QUERIES
Reduce customer support enquiries related to cargo journeys by 50%, streamlining the customer experience and easing the workload for our support team.
Modelling data
In collaboration with the project manager & engineering manager.
To achieve our goal of creating a digital twin of real-world cargo movement something we’d struggled with for years we needed a robust data model that could accommodate new data points while remaining compatible with our existing monolith.
Using insights from discovery, we collaborated closely to simplify workflows and map essential data points, using real shipment data as a foundation. We iterated this model with domain experts and live trials, scaling it to meet our standards for accuracy and reliability.
This approach provided the clarity and alignment needed for seamless implementation, ultimately supporting a smooth development and integration process.
Ideation workshop
In collaboration with the project manager.
To kick off ideation, I led a sketching workshop with the team and domain experts. We used “How Might We” questions to spark brainstorming, ensuring everyone, including those with key business insights, could share their ideas and assumptions.
The workshop was highly effective, fostering a sense of ownership by involving participants in ideation from the start. This led to a broader range of ideas and a more collaborative design direction.
Concept testing
In collaboration with the project manager.
We reduced risks early with rapid concept testing, running five iterative rounds with 5–7 participants. This approach quickly validated assumptions, refined designs, and accelerated discovery before usability testing.
Building rapport with participants by showing how their feedback shaped each round also fostered trust in Zencargo and confidence in the product, an unexpected benefit.
Overall, rapid testing was efficient and effective, allowing us to advance with a user-tested, confident design in a fraction of the usual discovery time.
Final designs
Old vs new
The redesign significantly reduced visual noise and clutter, bringing key information higher up on the page for immediate visibility.
The supply chain now takes centre stage, with a customisable level of detail to suit user needs.
The new design provides “at a glance” recognition of critical information, like transportation mode, origin and destination, and cargo location, making it easier for users to quickly understand the status.
Additionally, more data is surfaced and accessible without being buried under actions, enhancing usability and delivering a streamlined experience.
Design details
User testing helped us identify the key data points users needed most, so we surfaced them prominently within the page header.
Now, transportation mode, origin & destination, current status, order number, and purchase order number are instantly accessible.
By using clear visual cues and consistent information architecture, these critical details are easy to recognise and maintain consistency across every page.
The new route progress timeline allows users to customise detail levels, with preferences saved across the platform.
Standardised industry language supports analytics, feeding insights back to users through performance dashboards.
Visual cues mark current, past, upcoming milestones, and any issues, offering clear, instant status updates while enabling data-driven insights.
Success metrics
The tool delivered significant improvements in transparency and user experience for our customers. Here's a breakdown of the key success metrics
TRANSSHIPMENT VISIBILITY
Achieved 92% visibility, exceeding our target and providing customers with seamless tracking through complex handoffs.
CARGO LEVEL DETAIL
Reached 68% of journeys with detailed cargo-level progress, just below target. Lower-than-expected coverage may be due to limitations in data availability for certain routes.
DELAY TRANSPARENCY
Linked 54% of delay reasons, falling short of the target. We require more consistent delay reporting from partners. Focusing on partner data accuracy could bridge this gap and improve customer trust.
MILESTONE MAPPING
Exceeded target by mapping 97% of milestones, offering customers extensive journey visibility.
REDUCED SUPPORT QUERIES
Reduced queries by 38%, slightly below target. The reduction suggests improved usability, though further enhancements in delay transparency and route progress insights may further decrease customer support needs.
Learnings
If I ran this process again, I’d invest more time coordinating with other experience teams. We had multiple projects running in parallel, with two other teams working on the same page, which led to confusion about responsibilities and potential changes.
About two-thirds into the project, we formed a committee to share updates and avoid overlap, but by then, we’d already lost time resolving issues from the lack of early alignment. Recognising this need sooner would have saved time and prevented missteps.
Next steps
Building on our successes, the next steps for the “Journey” feature include integrating new data sources to improve shipment tracking accuracy, conducting targeted usability testing to refine the experience for specific personas, and automating data flows for scalability.
We’ll also refine our success metrics, tracking KPIs like user engagement and error reduction to keep the feature valuable to users and aligned with business goals. These actions will allow “Journey” to grow in depth and impact, meeting user needs and supporting long-term objectives.
