Renn Faron - Arrive Logistics Committed Capacity

Arrive Logistics

Committed Capacity

Arrive Logistics is a leading multimodal third-shipping logistics company that brokers shipping and distribution needs between customers and carriers. The company relies on the use of proprietary enterprise software to assist them in deal-making, day-to-day operations, and business insights. The internal platform is extremely complex and data-heavy.

Background

Arrive Logistics design was going through an overhaul from the legacy platform to new guidelines. These new and beta guidelines were being tested on various new products and some legacy overhauls to test implementation. All designers were welcome to provide feedback to refine and enhance the evolving new design language while testing and implementing various products.

Overview

Committed Capacity was a new project that would create passive revenue by automatically assigning shipping companies to established routes with set customers, times, and load types. A team member would quickly be able to create a prioritized shortlist of proven carriers (shipping companies) on each lane (route). As loads would come online, they would be automatically offered to the primary carrier. If that carrier did not accept the load it would go to the next in line. The magic of this system is that previous to this, all loads had to be matched to carriers manually. This was the first step to an automation system for passive load assignment.

Design

The issue that this design resolved is that there could be hundreds of customers, each with numerous lanes, and various specifications on each and then there could be a handful of assigned proven carriers that could potentially run each lane...if the logistics were agreed upon. The team/stakeholders also wanted to quickly glean performance metrics about each customer, each of their lanes, and each of the dedicated carriers, as well as the general performance of the entire Committed Capacity system. The beauty of the design is that the visual data is simplified in an expandable/collapsible nested display.

There were three levels of data that needed to nest within the carrier: 1) the customer; 2) each carrier's lane; and 3) each committed carrier. At a high level, the parent row would give a macro update on performance. As the child rows are expanded, more granular information will be displayed. The stakeholders started referring to this functionality and presentation as a "roll-up" design because all the data points rolled up into the parent container.

It allowed the company to get real-time information, add customers, lanes, and most importantly committed carriers to each lane. This kept the customers happy, proven carriers and loyal carriers happy and Arrive Logistics happy because it required less manpower to bring revenue. It was also very scalable, as the system and design could accommodate hundreds of customers and thousands of lanes.

Role

I was the lead and only designer on the project. Along with the PM, we worked with the stakeholders and greater team from kick-off until the completion of the MVP of this project. I worked in tandem with the off-site dev team to realize the work. This work was produced in 2021 while working in-house at Arrive Logistics.

Some initial layouts were produced based off some of the new guidelines and design language. It was prototyped in sketch and presented to the stakeholder for feedback. A problem was that there was not enough density on the screen. A different type of nesting approach was then produced and tested.

After the initial meetings with the stakeholders, it took time with the PM to sort through the process that the committed capacity back-end system would follow as it issued out loads to committed capacity carriers. This process would ultimately affect aspects of the design, layout, and data shown. This was a documentation artifact outtake from that meeting.

These are some shots from the final design layout that was eventually built for the team. I really enjoyed how integrated everything felt, including the confirmation overlay at the bottom of the screen.

Here are some of the unique side panel layouts that would quickly allow brokers to provide input to all the various parameters and specifics to customers, carriers, and lanes without disturbing the nested dashboard environment.

I really enjoy the slight variations in stroke and background coloring to help create depth and focus in the immediate information at hand. This helped the brokers quickly frame and drill down on the specific information they needed to review or update.

Prototyping in Sketch was a necessary tool to get buy-in from the stakeholders. Prototyping was also a useful way to coordinate intent with the dev team.

Above is a prototype created to test the nesting functionality and coordinate current progress with the stakeholders.