Agility
FOCiS
Transforming a Legacy Freight Management Platform
Reimagining a mission-critical logistics platform used by global operations teams, reducing workflow complexity, improving operational visibility, and establishing UX as a strategic capability within the organization.
“Operational complexity belongs inside the system—not inside the interface.”
TL;DR
- Problem
- A legacy freight platform forced global operations teams through fragmented, developer-shaped screens and spreadsheet workarounds.
- My role
- Senior UX Designer and UX Lead.
- What I did
- Led research across India, the UK, the USA, and Canada; restructured navigation around workflows; redesigned quotation, job overview, and charge editing; introduced UX governance and reusable patterns.
Project Snapshot
Role
Senior UX Designer • UX Lead
Timeline
2 Years
Team
4 PMs, 40 engineers, 1 designer
Platform
Enterprise Web Application
Domain
Global Logistics
Responsibilities
- UX Strategy
- Research
- Information Architecture
- Design System
- Design Leadership
Business Context
The platform was used daily by freight coordinators, warehouse planners, customer service teams, brokers, and operations managers across multiple countries.
Every additional click affected operational efficiency.
Every confusing workflow slowed shipment processing.
The goal was to create a scalable operational platform that could support global logistics teams without disrupting business-critical processes.
The Challenge
Agility's Freight Operations & Customer Information System (FOCiS) was the operational backbone for shipment quotations, job processing, tracking, and accounting across global teams.
Over years of continuous feature additions, the product had evolved into a complex, developer-driven system. Critical workflows required excessive navigation, information was fragmented across multiple screens, and users increasingly relied on spreadsheets and manual workarounds to complete everyday tasks.
The objective wasn't to redesign the interface.
It was to rethink how freight operations should work.
Research Across Global Operations
Rather than redesigning individual screens, we studied how operations differed across regions.
Research included:
- •
User interviews
- •
Contextual inquiry
- •
Workflow observation
- •
Heuristic evaluation
- •
Stakeholder workshops
This helped uncover regional differences while identifying common operational patterns that could scale globally.
Product Strategy
The redesign treated workflow architecture as the product. Restructuring how quotes, jobs, and charges flow did more for operators than any visual refresh could.
Design Principles
These principles shifted FOCiS from database-shaped screens to workflow-shaped operations.
01. Simplify operational complexity.
02. Design for repeatable workflows.
03. Build reusable enterprise patterns.
04. Surface what matters.
Separate user-entered information from system-generated information.
Key Challenges
Legacy Complexity
Years of feature growth without workflow coherence
Operational Pressure
Every click affected shipment processing speed
Global Variation
Regional differences across India, UK, USA, and Canada
Engineering Culture
Establishing UX as a strategic capability
Understanding the Existing System
I spent time understanding how freight teams actually completed their work. Through field research, interviews, and workflow analysis, several recurring patterns emerged.
Fragmented Workflows
Tasks required navigating multiple disconnected screens.
Developer-Centric Information Architecture
The product reflected database structures instead of operational workflows.
Limited Operational Visibility
Users couldn't easily understand task status, approvals or pending actions.
Heavy Cognitive Load
Large forms, repeated inputs and inconsistent interactions slowed everyday work.
Trade-offs & Constraints
Trade-off
Rather than cosmetic UI cleanup, we invested in workflow redesign and reusable enterprise patterns.
This required more research and cross-team alignment, but addressed the workflow problems a visual refresh would have left in place.
Trade-off
Rather than optimizing every regional variation independently, we established shared workflow patterns with local configuration.
This preserved global consistency while still supporting country-level operational differences.
Constraints
Legacy developer-driven architecture
Mission-critical daily logistics operations
Global regional process differences
High cognitive load forms and nested workflows
Limited historical UX governance
Engineering-led product culture
Systems Thinking
FOCiS was reframed as an operational flow—not a collection of disconnected modules.
- Quote
- Job
- Execution
- Charges
- Visibility
Design Solutions
Simplifying Quotation Creation
Problem
Quotation creation involved multiple popups, repeated data entry and complex navigation.
Solution
A streamlined workflow grouped related information together, reduced unnecessary inputs and introduced faster location lookup using ZIP codes.
Impact
Quotation creation reduced from hours to under two minutes during testing.
Operational Dashboard
Problem
Teams lacked a single view of pending tasks, approvals, and shipment status across modules.
Solution
A unified dashboard surfaced actionable items, regional priorities, and workflow bottlenecks in one operational view.
Navigation Restructure
Problem
Navigation reflected system modules rather than how freight teams completed daily work.
Solution
Information architecture was reorganized around operational workflows, reducing depth and aligning menu structure with user mental models.
Charge Editing
Problem
Editing charges required navigating multiple screens with repeated data entry and unclear validation states.
Solution
Inline editing patterns, contextual validation, and grouped charge fields reduced errors and accelerated corrections.
Information Hierarchy
Problem
Critical and secondary information competed for attention, increasing cognitive load on complex forms.
Solution
Visual hierarchy separated user-entered data from system-generated fields, with progressive disclosure for advanced options.
Before / After
Before
After
Information architecture aligned to operational tasks
Consistent interaction patterns introduced platform-wide
What Changed
Before
Operations navigated fragmented, developer-shaped screens.
After
Operations worked through clearer, task-oriented workflows.
Before
Critical workarounds lived in spreadsheets outside the system.
After
Reusable patterns kept more of the operational work inside FOCiS.
My Role
I led the UX transformation of FOCiS from research through implementation.
My work included:
- •
Defined the UX strategy
- •
Led user research across India, UK, USA and Canada
- •
Established personas and operational journey maps
- •
Simplified core freight workflows
- •
Introduced UX governance
- •
Built reusable design patterns
- •
Aligned engineering and business stakeholders
- •
Mentored designers throughout the transformation
Outcomes
<2 mins
Quotation creation
Global
Research across 4 countries
Established
UX governance
Reusable
Design foundation
Future Opportunities
- •
Deeper role-based operational dashboards across regions
- •
Expanded reusable form and validation patterns across modules
- •
Continuous research loops tied to logistics efficiency metrics
Reflection
FOCiS taught me that enterprise UX starts with how people make decisions under operational pressure, and with designing systems that remove friction without disrupting complex business processes.
The most lasting result was cultural: a user-centered design practice inside an engineering-led organization, and a reusable foundation that later product work built on.
What I Learned
Principal enterprise design means changing how organizations build—not just what ships.
Key Takeaways
- 01
Enterprise redesign starts with workflows—not screens.
- 02
Shared patterns outperform one-off module polish.
- 03
UX governance is part of operational transformation.