Startup client, Highway, approached us with a solid background of freight shipping industry expertise and a vision to streamline the onboarding process for carriers signing up with new brokers. They needed an app that would eliminate lengthy paperwork processes through a one-time profile and intuitive dashboard-centered experience serving both parties. We dove into market research and absorbed industry knowledge that would allow us to identify needs and technology opportunities throughout the fragmented, nuanced freight industry. This research allowed us to clarify and build a persona for the target user, giving us a very clear picture of how Highway could best serve their goals. With a strong user persona solidified, we launched into branding and building a prototype that could be used to pitch to investors and validate product-market fit.

Our challenge was to design an onboarding process (among other tools) that allowed carriers to engage with large amounts of technical information quickly, securely and simply. The UX needed to be simple and highly intuitive to reduce friction and the “barrier of entry” for users. The designs also had to incorporate several legal requirements and a significant amount of technical language without feeling clunky or overly heavy. We knew everything we designed needed to support the goal of "easy" for the carrier to interact with, while also providing comprehensive and accurate data for individual freight brokers. We explored prominent industry visuals and built a brand system that felt clear, direct and approachable with high contrast colors and simple lines.