Designing for the depot, not the desk
What SmartDeliver taught us about interfaces used standing up.
The dispatch console was designed at a desk, on a large monitor, by people who were sitting down. The driver app is used one-handed, outdoors, often in bright sun, by someone who has thirty seconds and a parcel in the other hand. Those are not the same design problem, and our first pass treated them as though they were.
The tells were obvious once we watched. Tap targets sized for a mouse. A confirmation dialog that required reading. A colour-coded status that vanished in direct sunlight. None of it showed up in review, because review happened at a desk.
What changed: the driver app now assumes one thumb, no reading, and unreliable signal. Every action at the door is a single large control, status is carried by shape as well as colour, and proof of delivery queues locally and syncs when it can rather than blocking on a connection that may not be there.
The console kept its density — that screen genuinely is used at a desk by someone who wants everything visible at once. Two audiences, two interfaces, one system underneath. Trying to serve both with one layout was the actual mistake.
