Helping long haul truckers find their next truck stop
3 Month Contract
Generative Research, UI/UX, Prototyping, User Testing
2 Designers, 1PM
The Problem
Trucking is the 7th most dangerous job in the U.S. (2019). Samsara needed to improve driver performance metrics by supporting the truckers responsible for customer shipments. I designed solutions to drive metrics such as accident reports, delivery timeliness, driver safety scores and fuel efficiency.
Research
This project was entirely generative so it began with secondary research and interviews on Samsara’s largest customer persona: U.S. long-haul truckers. This highly niche persona warranted interviews (despite being expensive and time consuming). I collaborated with a researcher to form a generative research plan and interview framework. My team interviewed 11 truckers at the SF Oakland Truck Stop to identify connections between how truckers' pain points impact their performance on the job.
01
Existing Map Apps are Unsafe
Google/Apple routes trucks through low underpasses, residential streets and steep inclines unsafe for trucks.
Impact: truckers constantly deviate from unsafe routes which wastes fuel, causes late shipments and increases crashes.
Hypothesis: provide routes tailored for semi trucks to reduce wasted fuel, late shipments and crashes caused by sudden reroutes.
02
Law Requires Four Driving Breaks
Truckers are required to park according to four driving break rules mandated by the government. Each rule is complex and hard to track.
Impact: truckers struggle to abide by each rule resulting in $10K fines, lower driver safety scores and unemployment.
Hypothesis: help truckers track their upcoming drive breaks on the road to prevent break violations.
03
Truckers Rely on Truck Stops for Amenities
Truckers rely on truck stops for dinner, showers, parking, gas and a place to sleep.
Impact: Finding the right truck stop is dangerous. Truckers exit their mapping app to see the amenities of nearby options which increases their distracted driving score.
Hypothesis: help truckers safely find nearby truck stops by focusing on essential amenities to improve driver safety scores.
Ideation
While insights played a large role in ideation, I also talked to other stakeholders about quarterly business goals to see how this product could help scale Samsara's ecosystem via integrations with existing products. Samsara already has devices that track truck specs (insight 1) and drive breaks (insight 2). So, I sketched and wireframed ideas that could leverage these pieces of data in ways that support truckers on the job to help them perform better.
As I worked with my PM on the initial PRD, collaboration with the search team became important. I spearheaded a user flow that brought both teams together to determine how different features of the product would intersect. This flow became a living document adopted by other designers that determined a point of entry on the existing Samsara driver app.
Testing
From research, I learned that our user pain points and contexts were extremely specific to trucking and that truckers have a wide range of tech literacy. I led a massive sourcing effort to remotely test prototypes during COVID-19. My team contacted every truck stop in California, 25 online trucking communities and over 50 individual truckers! Below are notable design decisions from usability tests with 9 participants.
Trucker-Friendly Interactions
Through testing I learned truckers have a wide range of tech literacy. Many struggled with dragging interactions. This learning strengthened our CTA strategy.
Refining the Suggestion Card
Through testing I learned that food, parking, gas prices and showers were most important to truckers. Unfortunately, it wasn’t technically feasible to include data on the latter two for every truck stop suggestion.
Final Designs
Route to the Perfect Truck Stop
Truckers vary in tech literacy. It’s why they dangerously exit navigation to Google “nearby truck stops” while driving (a behavior observed through research). Truckers can route to nearby truck stops in-app without typing a single word.
Final Designs
Never Miss a Drive Break Again
Truckers constantly track four federally mandated break clocks of varying complexity. Avoiding work break violations—which put employment at risk—is like performing mental gymnastics. The default navigation screen always displays time until the nearest break and alerts truckers at 30 minutes left.
Final Designs
Find Amenities on the Road
Truckers often miss drive breaks because they struggle to find truck stops. When Samsara’s hardware detects an upcoming work break, truckers can easily navigate to a suggested truck stop. Essential amenities at suggested truck stops are viewable at a glance.
Results
Final designs handed off to the Routes Team and in review
Rerouting task completion rate raised by 30%
Although this project did not launch during my time with Samsara, I proposed the following metrics as future measures of success:
Increase in drivers that reroute to nearby truck stops via suggestion card
Increase in drivers reroute to a truck stop via the stop finding function after their first reroute
Increase in average fuel efficiency and driver safety scores per customer
Decrease in driving break violations per driver
Decrease in unexpected late shipments
Reflection
Driving interfaces are all about trust and empowering the user to feel confident in selections that would otherwise be difficult to reverse.
Designing for truckers required reliance on testing more than anything. Past iterations were unsuccessful because they did not cater to trucker-specific factors such as the large cockpits of semi trucks or users with large ranges of tech literacy.
