Turvo
Turvo TMS
Designing Multi-Leg Shipment Workflows for Enterprise Logistics
Transportation management systems are built around operational precision. Even small workflow changes can affect planners, brokers, carriers, and shippers managing thousands of shipments every day.
At Turvo, I led the UX strategy for introducing Multi-Leg Shipments—a major platform capability that enabled customers to plan, consolidate, and manage complex freight movements while preserving the simplicity of existing shipment workflows.
“Enterprise software should evolve without forcing users to relearn it.”
TL;DR
- Problem
- Enterprise customers needed multi-stop, consolidated shipments on a platform built around single-leg shipments.
- My role
- Senior Product Designer (design track owner).
- What I did
- Extended the existing shipment model with parent–child legs, order consolidation, and rule-based routing validation, from discovery through usability testing to MVP.
Project Snapshot
Role
Senior Product Designer (Track Owner)
Timeline
Feature Initiative (0 → MVP)
Team
8 PMs, 20 engineers, 2 designers
Platform
Enterprise Web SaaS
Domain
Transportation Management
Responsibilities
- Product Discovery
- Workflow Architecture
- Enterprise UX
- Usability Testing
- Cross-functional Leadership
Project Context
Led the UX design for the Multi-Leg Shipment initiative within Turvo's Transportation Management System, collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver a new enterprise capability from discovery through MVP.
The Challenge
Turvo's platform was originally designed around single-shipment operations. However, enterprise customers needed to coordinate shipments spanning multiple stops, consolidation hubs, and delivery routes.
The new experience needed to reduce planning complexity while remaining familiar to existing users.
Multi-leg meant changing the platform's core shipment model without disrupting the workflows operations teams already depended on.
Understanding Users Through Personas & Tours
To design Multi-Leg Shipments without disrupting existing operations, we mapped stakeholder roles and walked through how planners, brokers, and operations teams move freight through the platform today.
Research included:
- •
Persona mapping
- •
User journey tours
- •
Cross-functional workshops
- •
Workflow walkthroughs
These sessions clarified who owns each step of a multi-leg movement and which mental models we needed to preserve while expanding the shipment model.
Product Strategy
Multi-leg planning expanded the platform's operational model while protecting the workflows planners already depended on every day. The new capability had to feel like part of the shipment they already knew.
Design Principles
These principles protected operational continuity as the platform expanded.
01. Extend existing workflows before introducing new ones.
02. Operational continuity is more important than visual novelty.
03. Catch routing conflicts with validation rules before planners have to.
Key Challenges
Operational Continuity
Expanding shipment models without disrupting daily work
Enterprise Complexity
Supporting multi-stop consolidation at platform scale
Mental Models
Extending familiar workflows instead of replacing them
Validation Risk
Preventing routing conflicts across grouped legs
Building for Scale
Rather than designing Multi-Leg as an isolated feature, I established reusable shipment foundations that could support future operational models without forcing teams to relearn the system.
Foundations built into the shipment model:
- •
Scalable shipment hierarchy models
- •
Reusable interaction patterns
- •
Flexible list and detail views
- •
Configurable enterprise workflows
- •
State-driven shipment management
- •
Extensible information architecture
The solution enabled future shipment models to be introduced without requiring teams to learn entirely new operational patterns.
Key Design Decisions
Rather than introducing an entirely new workflow, I focused on extending users' existing mental models.
Key product decisions included:
- •
Parent–child shipment relationships for grouped freight movements
- •
Structured order consolidation workflows
- •
Rule-based validation to prevent routing conflicts
- •
Context-aware shipment visibility across multiple legs
- •
Configurable workflows supporting different customer requirements
By building on familiar interactions, the new capability integrated naturally into existing logistics operations while supporting significantly more complex planning scenarios.
Trade-offs & Constraints
Trade-off
Rather than launching a brand-new multi-leg interface, we extended existing shipment workflows.
This constrained visual redesign opportunities, but protected operational continuity for teams already managing thousands of shipments.
Trade-off
Rather than exposing every consolidation edge case up front, we prioritized rule-based validation and configurable workflows.
This kept the default experience simpler while still supporting customer-specific enterprise requirements.
Constraints
Existing single-shipment mental models
Mission-critical daily operations
Enterprise customer configuration requirements
Routing and consolidation edge cases
Cross-functional delivery timeline
Platform-wide information architecture
Systems Thinking
Multi-leg planning was structured as an extension of the shipment system—not a parallel product.
- Order
- Consolidation
- Parent Shipment
- Child Legs
- Execution
What Changed
Before
Shipment planning relied on isolated, single-leg workflows.
After
Operations managed grouped freight through reusable models.
Before
Complex multi-stop planning forced workarounds outside the system.
After
Planners coordinated multi-leg movements inside familiar workflows.
My Role
As the design track owner for the Multi-Leg Shipment initiative, I partnered closely with product managers, engineers, and researchers throughout the project lifecycle.
My responsibilities included:
- •
Product Discovery
- •
UX Research Collaboration
- •
Workflow Architecture
- •
Information Architecture
- •
Enterprise UX Design
- •
Usability Testing
- •
Cross-functional leadership
From early concept exploration through usability validation and delivery, I drove the design direction for one of the platform's foundational capabilities.
Impact
Product
- •
Introduced multi-leg shipment planning into the core platform
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Enabled more complex freight and consolidation workflows
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Established a scalable foundation for future shipment capabilities
User Experience
- •
Preserved familiarity by extending existing workflows
Leadership
- •
Led UX strategy for a cross-functional product initiative
- •
Aligned product, engineering, and research around operational continuity
- •
Balanced enterprise-scale complexity with workflow simplicity
Future Opportunities
- •
Advanced consolidation intelligence for high-volume shippers
- •
Deeper exception handling across multi-leg execution
- •
Customer-configurable planning templates for recurring freight patterns
Reflection
Designing Multi-Leg Shipments reinforced an important principle of enterprise product design: users shouldn't have to relearn a system every time the business evolves.
The most successful enterprise features are often the ones that introduce powerful new capabilities while feeling like a natural extension of existing workflows. By preserving familiar mental models and focusing on operational continuity, we delivered a solution that expanded the platform without increasing cognitive overhead.
What I Learned
Principal enterprise design is often about expanding the system quietly enough that users feel progress—not disruption.
Key Takeaways
- 01
Enterprise adoption depends on continuity as much as capability.
- 02
Extend mental models before inventing new ones.
- 03
Platform foundations outlast feature launches.