Too much to scan
Important entry points competed with a large amount of information, making the next action harder to identify.
Transplace / Enterprise logistics / Product design
Less repetition.
More control.
Rethinking navigation and bulk editing in a complex routing guide workspace.
- Product
- Routing guide management
- My contribution
- Research & discovery
Low- and high-fidelity design - Design foundation
- Material Design
Angular environment - Case study focus
- Navigation & efficiency
in data-heavy workflows
01 / The challenge
A powerful system.
A demanding workflow.
The workspace brought routing guides, lanes, carriers and configuration into one application. The design challenge was to make that complexity easier to navigate without removing the controls experienced users needed.
The opportunity was in the everyday work: finding the right function, understanding the current context and changing multiple records with confidence.
Keep configuration in context
The design keeps guide and lane information available as a reference while users move between related settings.
Reduce repeated work
Similar updates across multiple lanes were an opportunity to reduce repetition through a bulk editing workflow.
A deliberately focused story
This case study covers the routing guide workspace, navigation and multi-record updates. Fleet tracking, driver messaging and route optimisation sit outside the story presented here.
02 / The workflow
Start with the task.
Keep the context.
Rather than organise this story around broad personas, I focus on the sequence an operations user needs to complete inside the workspace.
Find a guide
Search the available records and open the relevant configuration.
Inspect its lanes
Understand the current settings and identify records that need attention.
Apply a change
Edit one record or update a selected group with a shared change.
Check the result
Confirm the scope and inspect the affected records.
03 / Design decisions
Three decisions.
One clearer workspace.
I focused on access to important functions and the ability to update several lanes at once, supported by a consistent structure across related configuration tasks.
01
Prioritise access
Give important functions a clear entry point.
I redesigned the landing view to distinguish important functions from the wider information structure, placing direct entry points on the right-hand side of the workspace.
The design balance: direct entry points make functions visible, while the search and records remain the main working area. The two-column layout gives these different tasks distinct places.
02
Reduce repetition
Make one change across multiple lanes.
I proposed allowing power users to update several lanes at once. This made the multi-record operation an explicit part of the design rather than treating every record as an isolated task.
1. Keep the working set visibleA persistent lane strip provides a reference point across records.
2. Inspect configurationCommitments and qualifiers sit beside the lane details.
3. Protect unfinished workA save prompt makes unsaved changes explicit before leaving.
03
Preserve orientation
A shared structure for related tasks.
The screens use a recurring combination of guide context, section navigation, search controls and data tables. The repeated structure connects related configuration tasks without changing the entire workspace.
Keep the reference point
Retain the guide information while users inspect lanes, participants or regions, so the relationship between a record and its parent configuration remains visible.
Reuse the interaction pattern
Use familiar search, table and editing patterns across adjacent tasks. New content should not require users to relearn the entire interaction.
Working with constraints
Improve the workflow.
Respect the system.
The team selected Material Design as the front-end foundation. My work sat within that direction, with the value of the redesign concentrated on structure and interaction.
Design foundation
Work within an existing direction.
A shared UI foundation set boundaries for visual design. The main opportunity was to improve navigation and task flow within those boundaries.
Information density
Make complexity legible.
The workspace contains many fields and tables. The challenge is to establish hierarchy while retaining the information needed to complete the task.
Expert workflows
Balance speed with control.
Bulk actions create an opportunity for efficiency. Their design also needs to make the scope and consequences of a change understandable.
04 / Selected screens
Look closer at the work.
Explore the detailed states behind the main workflows. Select a category and open any screen to inspect it at full resolution.
05 / Validation
Judge the design
by the work it enables.
I prepared usability testing scenarios and took part in sessions as a moderator and, in some cases, an observer. The evaluation plan below sets out how I would assess the navigation and bulk editing workflows.
Future evaluation would focus on the following tasks and measures.
Find the right function
Ask an operations user to locate the relevant configuration area from the landing view.
Observe: first action, wrong turns and need for assistance.Update multiple lanes
Ask the user to apply one change to a selected group while leaving other records unchanged.
Observe: task completion, time and selection errors.Understand the result
Ask the user to explain which records changed and whether any still require attention.
Observe: correct interpretation and recovery from errors.The contribution visible in the design
The design makes important entry points explicit and introduces a proposal for changing multiple lanes together. The intended benefit is less repeated work with clearer control over the affected records. Task-based evaluation would establish how these changes affect speed, accuracy and confidence.
For this kind of product, clarity is not the absence of detail. It is knowing what matters, what an action will change and what to do next.