I played a pivotal role in a collaborative effort to develop an innovative web application that provides immediate
access to comprehensive vessel tracking and management tools for both internal and external stakeholders. This
groundbreaking digital platform represents the shipping industry's first-ever solution tailored for pool partners. It
empowers pool partners with the necessary data to facilitate their vessel reporting and monitoring processes.
It is the first market-facing digital platform in the commercial management space. The platform is unparalleled in terms of
stability and complete transparency to real-time, un-scrubbed data.
As a UX designer, I was responsible for requirement gathering, documentation, wireframing, prototyping and testing, and information architecture.
This company already had a legacy application with numerous usability problems, therefore they essentially wanted us to
redesign the entire application by adding fresh design, layout, graphics, and content (information architecture).
On the team, there were a few business analysts, a lot of engineers, and I was one of the two designers.
The main flow in the app, freight trader flow, where pool partners connect, track, and manage vessels, was under my
responsibility for the UX/UI experience. This screen is crucial for calculating the revenue of the business. Below are a
few of my most notable accomplishments:
Design sprints were used to guide our process: I was able to identify the issue, come up with a solution, create a
prototype, and implement the finished product with the help of my team.
From beginning to end: The speed with which the engineers were able to code the final designs proved that we could
execute and release features as a team.
Implemented a design process: This has helped our team establish more structure to how we conduct our work and allow
other teams to gain visibility across our upcoming sprints.
Our method was based on the Lean UX methodology. In this project, we tried to include the crucial stages of discovery, definition, ideation, and implementation.
We conducted affinity mapping with the entire team after gathering all the necessary data to synthesise the identified
pains. These issues were categorised under the platform's common themes and features.
In addition, we recorded user
stories for each of the platform's verified details, which aided in the definition of the key application flows as well
as the engineering and ux build effort.
I devised potential remedies based on the difficulties found in an effort to alleviate the suffering, which are:
less steps are taken in order to complete the task more quickly.
Displaying the mandatory fields and turning on the Next button's error validation
Grouping related fields will create a cleaner visual form hierarchy.
Because there wasn't a formal wizard component, I also had to develop a standardised UI and styling pattern for wizards
in the future. To do this, a standardised visual hierarchy and layout for the upcoming wizard component had to be
established.
After finding the solutions, I iterated through several wireframes and evaluated the designs using a variety of
techniques. Following this approach, the other teams were given responsibility for finishing the development and
testing, and I was always available to assist the teams in any way I could.
The learning curve for working in a startup at its early stages was extremely steep. I learned a lot about being lean
and knowing when and where to focus your energy and efforts from this eye-opening event. Several important lessons from
this endeavour include:
Concentrate on creating an MVP: You can only devote so much time and energy to a startup
(especially if you work a full-time job!) Therefore, it's crucial to concentrate on the features that might provide your
users with the most value.
Don't obsess about the finer points: I made the error of obsessing about how the UI looked
earlier in my journey. I was able to reprioritize the UX by taking a step back and reevaluating the user processes.
Concentrate on the issue: It is ultimately your consumers' problems that you will be attempting to alleviate, therefore
keeping it at the forefront of your mind is crucial because it is simple to lose sight of this while caught up in the
daily grind.
