About the project

I built a 0 to 1 fleet management SaaS product as the first hire. My role was to speak with customers from a variety of industries and design a product for this space.

I designed a fleet-management experience connecting tracking hardware with desktop and mobile apps. Working with my team, I helped fleet managers track assets on a live map, monitor vehicle health, understand driver behavior and safety, and assign assets to the right locations.

The problem

Fleet teams struggled to locate their assets, understand vehicle status, and coordinate across operating locations. Customer workshops revealed frustration with clunky dashboards and inaccurate information, alongside hesitation to trust another technology platform.

Fleets range from 100 to 5,000 assets across a variety of industries, transportation, construction, entertainment, and more, and the existing tools weren’t built for how these teams actually work.

Discovery & research

I led fleet managers from transportation, construction, and entertainment in a design thinking workshop.

Personas

What the personas revealed: fleet directors needed accurate, real-time information across field offices and simpler dashboards for less technical colleagues. Field operations managers needed to know whether they had the right assets for the work, with useful alerts and less administrative effort. These needs grounded the product in location, status, and coordination.

I had design partners create their own personas so we could better understand their goals and frustrations around managing fleets. This helped us with the stories we created and sketched.

We agreed to build the product around two goals. If at any point we diverged, I always brought the group back to these to keep us on track.

Storytelling and sketches

We then created stories using our personas to understand real-world scenarios. One story that stood out was how they kept losing bulldozers.

We now had stories to sketch, and I asked everyone to draw their ideal product. It was interesting how they all drew the same solution. My founder was shocked. Happy, but shocked.

Customers wanted specific fleets highlighted to prevent vehicles from different garages crossing over one another.

Designs

From sitemaps and user flows to wireframes, prototypes, and the shipped product.

Sitemaps and user flows

Working incrementally in our agile process helped my internal team stay aligned on scope, MVP first, then the fuller experience.

Wireframes

We iterated with users and stakeholders to ensure the content made sense to all. Thanks to the wireframes, and by working with hardware and software engineering, we discovered tech and hardware constraints such as Google Maps limitations and false fuel-tank information. I prototyped in Axure, which enabled us to test quick and often, leading to improvements to the application. I then used Figma to design the product.

A fuel-level decision that balanced value and feasibility

The founder wanted customers to see how much fuel a vehicle had, but engineering could not reliably provide gallons across vehicles with different gauges. I researched the constraint and proposed showing fuel as a percentage instead. That gave customers a relative fuel level without implying a precise gallon reading. The founder and engineering agreed, and we adopted that direction.

Designs and MVP

The big challenge is always being aware of cognitive load, not overwhelming users with tons of real-time information, and using proper colors for vehicle status on a map. By implementing analytics and surveys along with usability testing, we understood our users’ thought process and how they actually used the product.

After MVP

After MVP my team and I continued building out the product. I went out into the field, and it was great seeing how our customers used our products, along with their feedback. We eventually created an app and continued iterating on the product.

Results & impact

Shared asset visibility, a simpler experience, and a roadmap shaped with customers.