Scope
This project was sponsored by Highway. Highway provides freight brokerage tools that connect freight brokers with reliable carriers and help verify carrier identities.
Our scope was limited to the Highway Directory page — a crucial tool where brokers find and validate carrier contact information to detect for potential fraud carriers.
The challenge was to reduce the cognitive overload brokers experience when processing the directory's numerous data points to verify a carrier.
Context
Timeline
4 months
Collaborated With
3 UXRs, 4 UX Designers, 1 PM
Skills
Platform Audit
Stakeholder Interviews
Card Sorting
User Flow Mapping
Mental Model Diagrams
Usability Testing
Wire-framing
Hi-fidelity prototyping
Storytelling
Documentation
tl;dr
The Directory contains carrier contact information and data points that verify contact reliability. However, this abundance of information overwhelms brokers.
Our team's task was to simplify and streamline how different broker personas vet carriers within the directory.
Impact
Our hard work resonated with Highway's team - during one of our last meetings, our sponsor shared that they're already moving forward with implementing some of our recommendations
Re-designed version of the directory aligns better with both kinds of brokers — compliance leaders as well as carrier sales representatives.
Directory and the role it plays in a broker's vetting workflow
The Directory contains carrier contact information and data points that verify each contact's reliability to detect for potential fraud carriers.
Understanding Brokers and Their Workflow Needs
Different types of brokers interact with this data differently — compliance leaders need to carefully review it to identify fraudulent carrier contacts, while carrier sales representatives need to quickly scan to book carriers.
System should provide the right level of detail for each role and simplify the decision-making process for all broker personas.
Anatomy of a Contact Card
Different types of brokers interact with this data differently—compliance leaders need to carefully review it to identify fraudulent carrier contacts, while carrier sales representatives need to quickly scan to book carriers.
Anatomy of a Contact Card
Different types of brokers interact with this data differently—compliance leaders need to carefully review it to identify fraudulent carrier contacts, while carrier sales representatives need to quickly scan to book carriers.
Challenges I Solved For
Through 10+ contextual interviews, I mapped brokers' vetting workflows to uncover how the directory contributed to information overload and slowed decisions.
01
Showing just the right amount of data points
02
Finding the right contact
Breakdown of Challenge 01
Showing just the right amount of data points
Identified 3 main challenges based on 10+ contextual interviews with compliance leaders and sales representatives using Highway in their vetting workflows.
Jump to solution
Cluttered Risk Indicators
Risk indicators lack clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points.
Looooong List Of Contacts
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
Uncategorized Identifiers
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
Solution
2 drop down card > 1 dropdown card
I decided to prioritise this problem because 9 out of 10 brokers complained of the confusion caused by these risk indicators while Highway did the job of presenting the data to brokers, there was still work needed to prioritise the data that brokers actually need regularly.
So we conducted card sorting with brokers to decide on which data points take priority over others, the nomenclature of the data points.
While it was clear during our contextual inquiries that brokers don't always look at all the risk indicators Highway as a company has a rule that they believe in showing all the data, no tradeoffs there.
So, we decided to ideate ways in which we present only relevant data points but also not take the decision making power away by removing unused data points.
Thus, we used a simple and most commonly used concept called progressive disclosure.
Breakdown of Challenge 02
Brokers can't find the right contact quickly.
Throughout the directory, there's a long list of contacts that brokers can reach out to but it takes a while to find a specific contact causing friction in their vetting speed.
Issues
>> no pagination, scroll through all contacts
>> brokers only want to find only verified contacts and purpose specific contacts like
>> no search or filtering of contacts within the directory. during contextual interviews, we observed that many brokers were using cmd + f shortcuts to find a contact within a specific carrier profile as a workaround.
>> same contact gets listed in 'verified users' and 'contacts' section
Jump to solution
Cluttered Risk Indicators
Risk indicators lack clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points.
Looooong List Of Contacts
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
Uncategorized Identifiers
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
Here's What we had to Fix
01 Information Overload
The directory displayed an overwhelming amount of data with poor information hierarchy. We identified three main issues that contribute to brokers' cognitive overload:
Jump to solution
Cluttered Sub-Data Points
Current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators.
Looooong List Of Contacts
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
Uncategorized Identifiers
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
02 Complex Contact Findability
The directory lacks clear verification indicators and contains redundant contact entries across both the Highway-verified and general contacts sections. We identified two main issues:
Jump to solution
Missing Verification Indicator
Current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators.
Overlapping Contacts
Current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators.
03 Unclear System Logic
The platform's design contains several inconsistencies that create confusion. These inconsistencies made it hard for brokers to quickly understand and trust the information, which impacted their decision-making. We identified two main issues:
Jump to solution
Color and Terminology Mismatch
Current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators.
Misalignment Between Main Indicators and Driving Data Points
The current organization of risk indicators in Highway's directory lacks clear prioritization, forcing brokers to manually verify data points and potentially make incorrect assumptions due to inconsistent color indicators
Takeaways!
Learn as you go! Don't wait to become the domain expert.
It was my first time taking on a project from a completely unknown domain like freight industry. Initially, it felt overwhelming to learn everything and to speak their language.
Take time to understand the domain, but don't wait for complete understanding — learning happens throughout the process.
Be ready to adapt!
I also learned to adapt with the timeline and availability of resources, as things don’t always go as planned and so I had to eliminate a few activities and cherry pick how I would gain more insights in a shorter time, it was all about strategizing our process.
Spend Time To Identify All Stakeholders
Through our contextual inquiries, we realized we’d focused too narrowly on compliance leaders. turns out, carrier sales representatives were also key users of the directory.
We shifted to interviewing more sales reps later on, but looking back, starting with them earlier would’ve helped us compare workflows and draw sharper distinctions.
