LB4T — DAT Solutions

A mobile load board for truckers

What's a load board, anyway?

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DAT Solutions operates the United States' largest load boards (freight marketplace). Load boards help truck drivers, brokers, and shippers keep our roads loaded with freight with goods and food we rely on everyday. They trace their origins to notes on physical boards at truckstops about where to find freight. Now, load boards are a digital marketplace for truckers and brokers. Think of a load board as a "Craigslist for truckers", a place where brokers and shippers list their freight and truckers (typically owner-operators) post their availability.

Load Board for Truckers

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Injecting new life into a quietly successful app

Load Board for Truckers (LB4T for short), is DAT's mobile load board app. Originally released in 2016, it received a few updates, but priorities shifted and that team went on to work on other projects. Over the next year, LB4T quietly grew and kept growing until it became DAT's largest load board in terms of daily active users and load searches. Whoa, right? Truckers aren't checking their computers, they're checking their phones. All the time.

To keep momentum strong, we revisited LB4T to see where we could improve current features and address longstanding UX debt. Through conversations with truckers who used LB4T at Mid America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, I heard over and over again how they loved its simplicity. Current functionality consisted of searching for loads and posting trucks, but how could we improve that experience for truckers? They might be calling a dozen brokers and searching for an hour before booking a load. I kept that in mind when returning back to Portland. I think it's easy for teams to get caught up in reactionary style-development, where one review, support ticket, or conversation with a person can tacking on new features. I didn't want to change major functionality as that could break trust with those who were already relying on it for day to day business.

Tight knit team = happy team

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No more working in silos

I worked in a tight knit and collaborative environment with LB4T product and engineering. This meant conducting regular meetings with stakeholders, taking part in ideation sessions to help define our goals and address immediate issues, and meeting with product multiple times a week to ensure we weren't working in silos.

With a robust Material design system in place, I was able to quickly produce high fidelity mockups for stakeholder buy in and usability testing. While we were still defining completely new concepts, I steered towards low and mid fidelity so we could iterate more rapidly. LB4T was among the first projects at DAT where UX designers used Figma. Its sharing capabilities felt like I was never truly designing 'alone', as there was almost always at least one other person in my files looking around or leaving comments. It was admittedly a little weird at first (and forced me to be more organized! 😅), but I truly enjoyed feeling like we were all building something great together.

Tons of opportunity

As designer on LB4T, I created user flows, mock ups, and prototypes for a variety of features. This included a feature that helped truckers ogranize loads they were interested in or booking, an insurance integration for collecting past due freight payments, and initial concepts that will allow LB4T to intelligently match truckers with good paying loads to help reduce negotiation length and time spent searching.

Colleague recommendations

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Heather McGeachy, Principal UX Researcher

"I am honored to work closely with Rose within a UX team at DAT. Rose is incredibly organized and detail oriented. I rely on her ability to work quickly and efficiently on any task put before her. My favorite quality of Rose is her ability to work collaboratively with a diverse team. Her welcoming attitude makes her a joy to work with. She is a go to person for coming up with new tools, processes or methods.

As a UX Designer, Rose is devoted to broadening her skills through education and challenging herself by taking on new opportunities. Recently, she was part of a highly visible research engagement on a shortened timeline, and with little direction, she organized and coordinated the scheduling of participants, paying incentives and administering in-person UX tests and interviews. Rose is an asset to any team, I highly recommend her."

Arlene Anvitha, UX Designer

"Rose and I worked together on the DAT UX team. She has not only been a wonderful co-worker but also an incredible friend. She has a keen eye for visual design. She is also warm, friendly and empathetic all of which make her an excellent UX Designer. She cared deeply about truckers, our user base and worked hard to make sure their needs are kept in mind while designing interfaces. I would definitely love to work with Rose again, if I get a chance. She would be wonderful addition to any Design team!"