Customers
Is it booked? Where is it? Will it arrive on time? Is the destination ready? Which exceptions matter?
REDWOOD LOGISTICS / CONNECTED LOGISTICS
Reducing Handoffs Across the Freight Lifecycle
A shipment could be perfectly visible inside one workflow while the next person still did not know what to do.
Third-party logistics connects organizations that rarely share the same systems, priorities or operating context. Customers need confidence, carriers need viable freight, and brokers need to move volume while keeping control of exceptions.
As Redwood’s first UX designer and later UX lead, I worked across customer, carrier and internal products to reduce repetitive coordination, make state useful and automate straightforward work while preserving expert judgment.
CURRENT PROTOTYPE · CONNECTED LOGISTICS / FREIGHTLINK
A portfolio reconstruction of workflows and patterns from multiple Redwood initiatives—not one monolithic historical application.
One shipment. Multiple organizations.
- CustomerWhat needs to move, when, where and under what constraints?
- Broker / 3PLWho can service it while meeting customer and business requirements?
- CarrierIs it worth accepting, and can we service it?
- DriverWhat is assigned, and what happens next?
- DestinationHas everything arrived for the next activity?
Every handoff could add a system, a person, a status, a call or an email—and another opportunity for meaning to drift.
Preserve meaning as work crosses organizational boundaries.
Shared shipment data did not mean shared decision context.
Brokers
Who fits this load? Is the rate viable? What needs negotiation, and what can proceed without me?
Carriers
Does it fit my lane, equipment and rate? What restrictions apply? Can I accept without calling?
Internal operations
Where is coordination breaking down? Who owns the next action? What can the system automate?
Protect human attention for the work that needs judgment.
Difficult work
Unusual equipment, difficult lanes, restrictions, pricing, relationships, failed service and uncertain capacity genuinely needed expertise.
Routine coordination
Repeatable transactions could consume nearly the same attention. Where was a person adding judgment, and where were they relaying known information?
Understand the handoff → identify repeated judgment → express rules / state → automate the straightforward path → preserve intervention for exceptions.
Remove coordination that does not improve the decision.
Connect the lifecycle without forcing one interface on everyone.
Request, track and understand readiness
Quote / shipment request · tracking · installation / destination readiness.
Manage, narrow and coordinate
Load management · carrier matching · bids / award · exception management.
Find, accept and service freight
Available freight · eligible one-click acceptance · bids · assigned work.
SHARED CONCEPT FOUNDATION · Status, eligibility rules, exceptions and history connect cross-role work. This is the current portfolio model, not a claim that all workflows shipped together.
One project, fifteen dependencies
Three ways to make the next decision easier.
Ready-to-Install DispatchingFrom Package Tracking to Operational ReadinessTracked deliveries did not tell the next team whether work could begin.A store could depend on 15+ vendor/carrier deliveries. Group by installation project and surface Ready, Delayed, Lost, Damaged or Needs Review.Explore Ready-to-Install →Self-Service BookingRemoving Human Work From Transactions That Didn’t Need ItRoutine freight consumed attention needed for exceptions.Trusted carriers accepted eligible freight directly. The one-click experience increased booking throughput by 15%, compared with a projected 3–5%.Explore Self-Service Booking →Carrier MatchingTurning Broker Judgment Into Explainable RecommendationsA high score could still hide a poor operational fit.Narrow candidates using route, equipment, availability, preferences, restrictions, pricing and qualifications while preserving broker judgment.Explore Carrier Matching →
Make readiness visible. Enable direct action. Narrow complexity.
Customer needCarrier + shipment stateBroker decisionDownstream work
Recognizable problem
Tracking each delivery did not show readiness.
A store installation could depend on 15+ vendor/carrier deliveries. The next team needed project-level readiness, not another tracking number.
Design response
Group deliveries around the installation location / project and surface readiness and exceptions for the technician decision.
Explore Ready-to-InstallDesktop → web → self-service → decision support.
Desktop-heavy systems and slow screens mediated many tasks through representatives. Modernization brought faster web interactions and more direct customer/carrier access. Self-service reduced routine coordination; decision support narrowed complex choices.
The external acceptance path was easier enough that carrier representatives used it on behalf of drivers. That behavior exposed workflow friction rather than a simple staffing shortage.
Supporting Load Board modernization
The legacy board combined many fields, roles and abbreviated signals. Role-relevant views, meaningful status cues and details on demand supported faster interpretation. The redesign’s performance observations are separate from the one-click booking throughput result.
Annotated, white-labeled comparisons can show this supporting work later. The overview does not reproduce internal screens.
PORTFOLIO RECONSTRUCTION · Connected Logistics joins recurring patterns across several years and multiple initiatives. It is not presented as one application that existed in this exact form at Redwood.
The tools changed. The purpose of prototyping did not.
Original delivery
Depending on the initiative: research / workflow analysis → wireframes / interaction design → front-end prototypes → HTML / CSS / Bootstrap → engineering implementation → QA / operational feedback.
My UX and front-end leadership made workflows concrete beyond a clickable frame.
Current reconstruction
Recovered workflows and business rules → system modeling → AI-assisted exploration → code-based prototype → connected cross-role state.
Make the workflow concrete enough to expose what does and does not work.
Automate certainty. Escalate ambiguity.
- Show readiness, not just status. Translate state into the next participant’s decision.
- Keep recommendations inspectable. Show why a candidate surfaced.
- Preserve exceptions. A lean happy path still needs a recovery path.
- Bridge organizational boundaries. A shared transaction does not imply shared goals or terminology.
Measured movement. Specific boundaries.
+15%
Booking throughputOne-click acceptance, compared with an initial expectation of approximately 3–5%. This result belongs to that workflow.
~10–15s → ~2s
Interface performanceSlow individual desktop screens compared with observed newer web interactions during modernization. Not a guarantee for every transaction or system.
~250 / day
Prior booking ceilingContext for the capacity problem, not an achieved improvement metric. More staffing alone had not removed the workflow constraint.
Early modernization and self-service success contributed to continued investment in broader product redesign. Readiness and matching are described through their workflow changes, not borrowed booking metrics.
Make routine work cheaper and exceptions easier to recognize.
UX could improve
Coordination, workflow complexity, self-service, readiness visibility, matching transparency, decision support and cross-role handoffs.
Reality remained messy
Capacity, pricing, customer rules, external data, weather, traffic, relationships, driver/equipment availability, vendor delays and damaged or lost freight.
The goal was never to make logistics perfectly predictable.
From coordination-heavy workflow to connected service.
- Map where information changes owners.
- Identify people relaying known information.
- Find deterministic decisions for rules or self-service.
- Translate state into readiness for the next team.
- Narrow complex choices before expert judgment.
- Preserve human intervention where expertise matters.
- Make exceptions and recovery visible.
Useful anywhere work crosses organizations, systems and people before the outcome is complete.