Leading design at a high-growth logistics technology company and building a team

Reinventing freight forwarding

I joined Flexport,—a software-powered full-service freight forwarder—in 2014 as one of its first hires. In the beginning, there were only a few employees in a small San Francisco office. The company is now valued at $8 billion and has thousands of employees in offices all over the world.

Flexport’s mission is to fix the user experience in global trade. The company leverages software and industry expertise to provide more visibility and control, along with lower transaction costs and prices. Flexport is developing a worldwide network that is culminating in a new operating system for global trade.

Focusing on user research

User research is crucial at Flexport because of the complex workflows of the many user types that must be accommodated to make the system work. One of the first things I did at Flexport was to get out of the building and interview clients.

I conducted countless user research sessions to derive product insights. I employed user interviews, contextual inquiry and analysis, persona development, card sorting, etc.

Focusing on regulatory compliance

International logistics entails stringent regulatory compliance. Each new client needs to provide many details, documents, and verifications before Flexport is allowed to serve them. The process is painful, which made me excited to design it from the ground up.

I started the project by reviewing all the known requirements with my product manager. We agreed on business and user goals and began examining the common onboarding issues. I started to sketch ideas, while my product manager further defined all the exceptions and unknowns.

We performed task analysis and defined the conditional flow. I then created a low-fidelity prototype and began to conduct usability tests.

I iterated the design based on insights from usability tests, as well as new requirements for exceptional cases (ex. what if the user is apart of a non-resident corporation and doesn’t have access to key documents?).

I then created a high-fidelity prototype and conducted additional usability tests. Once we had high confidence in the new design, we began implementation. We then made countless tweaks to the compliance onboarding flow after its launch to accommodate unique use cases.

Logistics dashboards and shipment views

One of the primary touch-points of Flexport’s product system was the shipment dashboards and tracking pages. I worked closely with product managers and engineers to construct logistics visualizations, action-items, and a messaging system. These designs went through extensive testing, analysis, and iteration to provide a user with deep insight into their global supply chain.

I sketched countless ideas and brainstormed new possibilities with my team. I created low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes to test. The outcome was three distinct views: a global shipments map view, a shipment list view, and a shipment details view.

The global shipments map view provides a representation of a client's international freight movements. Users hover on the different shipments to see metadata and click to see a summary of the shipment in a card overlaying the map.

The shipment list view shows shipments presented linearly. Users can sort and filter the list. This view provides a structured way to pivot information to commit subsequent action.

The shipment details view provides a single source of truth for an individual shipment. Users can see route details, shipment status, associated documents, products being shipped, and have the ability to contact their logistics manager.

Billing management

Building a better billing system with automatic updates, and easy ways to review and compare line items, export data, add payment methods, and pay for rendered services was imperative to the product’s success.

I enjoyed thinking of ways to alert users to past due invoices, as well as increase transparency across our system. Many designers find these types of design problems boring. I find them fascinating.

The user interface

I believe a good user interface emerges after implementation and shapes later implementation through a set of standard design elements, components, patterns, and views. I had the opportunity to design the first versions of the product before distilling the design system.

Management becomes a full-time job

As Flexport grew, so too did our design needs.

In 2016, the majority of my time became dedicated to managing the design team I built. As the director of design, I managed a group of 12, including product designers, design managers, a design system lead, a user research lead, and a communication designer.

Evangelizing the mission

I believe the greatest opportunity for designers is in reinventing the antiquated industries powering our world. International logistics comprises 12% of global GDP, but the industry still operates like it’s the 80’s. Too many designers work on easy problems because they don’t know about the inefficiencies of industries that are three steps removed from their daily experience.

As the web progresses exponentially, and user experience becomes a major part of business success, traditional and highly regulated industries like freight forwarding remain stagnant. This stagnation has produced many unnecessary barriers that — given the right foundation — design is uniquely qualified to address.

Global logistics—like so many other old industries—has the power to lift millions from poverty and increase global prosperity, as well as spark conflict, increase inequality, and pollute the world. A reconstitution of international logistics is coming, and it is vital to get it right this time. I believe the next decade provides a small window for establishing a new paradigm, and designers have the opportunity to help make it right.

Promoting Flexport’s mission within the company was just as important as communicating it to external audiences. I did my part to propagate Flexport’s mission through design. As an example, I created employee anniversary badges. Employees proudly stuck the badges on their laptops with each passing year.