Density without the noise
A logistics analytics platform redesigned for operators who read it eight hours a day.
- Client
- Northwind
- Year
- 2024
- Timeline
- Five months
- Discipline
- Product Design
Overview
Northwind tracks freight across four continents. Their operators live inside the product for a full shift, and the previous interface had been designed for demos rather than for that reality.
The problem
Everything competed for attention at once. Fourteen colours carried meaning, none of them consistently. Operators had built their own spreadsheets alongside the product because they trusted those more, which meant the company was making decisions from data it could not see.
What I did
- 01
Shadowed six operators through full shifts and logged every time they left the product for a spreadsheet.
- 02
Reduced the palette to four semantic colours and let typography and spacing carry the rest of the hierarchy.
- 03
Rebuilt the core table to hold three times the rows on screen while staying legible at arm-length viewing distance.
- 04
Took the whole interface to WCAG AA, including the charts, which had been failing contrast throughout.
Outcome
The redesign shipped in stages across the last quarter. The shadow spreadsheets are largely gone, and operators now resolve exceptions inside the product where the decisions get recorded.
- Semantic colours, down from 14
- 4
- Rows visible without scrolling
- 3x
- Contrast across every chart
- AA
- Time to resolve an exception
- −41%