DAT One
How might a freight logistics giant improve upon its product offerings in order to stay ahead of the competition?
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
UI Design, UX Design, Product Strategy, Prototyping & Testing, vQA
DATE
2022-2023
Overview
DAT has been the freight logistics industry standard for decades. (DAT stands for ‘Dial-A-Truck’ – the company started off posting loads at rest areas where truckers could call in and bid on the load!)
DAT powers the trucking industry in North America through a suite of data and logistics tools utilized by carriers (truckers) shippers (those who need their goods trucked), and brokers (the middlepeople who ensure shipments get from point A to point B without a hitch).
At its essence, DAT enables goods to be sent by truck from point A to point B. But distilling the mission like that undersells how complex the challenge truly is. For context, in 2022, 400 million truckload shipments were posted to DAT!
The challenge
In recent years, however, competitors have been nipping at the company’s heels, offering new technology and features.
Our mission was to audit and redesign DAT’s product offerings and identify ways to improve the experience for its key users (brokers, carriers and shippers).
A unified product
DAT’s product offerings were siloed by customer segment. Tools for brokers didn’t necessarily look or act anything like tools for carriers, and that led to confusion and inefficiencies (solvable ones!)
Our efforts helped bring DAT One to life, which took the company’s disparate products and unified them into a single platform. Continuity across platforms meant reduced friction between users
Private Network
I focused much of my efforts on a brand new product called Private Network. Working with a couple of wonderful and talented UX Designers at DAT, we sought to build a platform that let users connect with each other, forming a network of trusted partners that improved efficiency and trust – why scroll through a long list of carriers when you have a curated list of folks you know and trust!
Onboarding, simplified
Truck drivers need to complete an onboarding process, aptly called OnBoard, each time they want to bid on a shipment posted by broker they've never worked with before. Drivers would complain that they'd lose out on shipments because the OnBoard process took so long. That's unacceptable!
I audited the process and discovered a ton of opportunity to improve and expedite the experience. Leveraging publicly available data via API calls autocompleted a lot of the required fields, and adding a sidebar containing the shipment status lets drives know whether the shipment is still available.
The old process would take upwards of half an hour. We clocked the new and improved OnBoard in the 5-7 minute range.
Design system
A unified platform necessitated a unified design system. I helped with DAT One’s design system and information architecture, factoring in the needs of customers who use features like load posting and tracking.
The design system greatly helped streamline our efforts and reduced the chance for inconsistencies thanks to a robust set of reusable components and clear guidelines.
Marketing site vQA
When I was first brought on to the project, DAT was preparing to launch its newly redesigned marketing site. Armed with a background in front-end web design, I was able to not only conduct a full visual quality assurance audit of the site, but troubleshoot and provide solutions for most of the bugs I identified.
Takeaways
Freight logistics is head-spinningly complex. Ever since working with DAT, I’ve had a newfound sense of reverence and appreciation for trucks on the highway now that I know the full extent of what goes into their journey.
As for my role, this was an intimidating project to dive into. However, over time I realized that the goal was quite simple: Find the most effective way to connect brokers who need loads shipped with truckers who can ship the loads. At that point it was just a matter of finding and improving upon any element of the overall experience that impacts that basic goal. That lesson has since helped me address seemingly unmovable obstacles in projects.