Improvements Being Made
Have you ever wondered, “Huh, I wonder how we could do this better?” Well you’re not alone. Nussbaum is continuously striving to improve in order to create a positive impact in every interaction. Last week, several members of our IT department partnered with a couple System drivers to better understand the driver experience from start to end of a week. So, what’s with all the sticky notes and what exactly were they working on?
What is a Journey Map?
To better understand our driver’s needs, we conducted a Journey Map study. What is a Journey Map? The Journey Map is a visualization of a process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal. Basically, it is a visual artifact that capture what a person thinks, does, and feels as they move through their day. Rather than assuming we know what our drivers experience, we wanted to hear directly from our drivers and gather real, unfiltered perspectives on the moments that matter most. The goal is to create a shared picture across teams, so we can make smarter decisions about what to build, fix, and improve.
Steps to Progress
To make the next step to progress, our UX team hosted a workshop (facilitated by Jorge Colón) with three Nussbaum system drivers, a Driver Manager, and members of the LiNK Product Team (Neil Barbour, Jeremy Dengal, Ken Walters, Brian Johnson, Jason Banwart, J Privett, and Jorge Colón). Together we mapped out what a driver’s typical week looks like – from the moment they receive their first trip assignment to the moment they return home for the weekend.
The workshop was structured around 6 stages of a driver’s week
- Receive next trip assignment
- Begin trip / pick up load
- In-transit
- Receive trip modifications
- Arrive at destination / engage with customer
- End the week / receive next trip
For each stage, participants individually captured actions they take on those steps, what they expect to happen, what frustrates them, and how they feel through it. We refer to these in the workshop as actions, expectations, pain points, and emotions. We then shared our thoughts, built on each other’s ideas, and had conversations about each stage of the process.
What Do We Hope To Learn?
This map will become an important artifact for the team as we look to bring improvements to LiNK. Up next, Jorge, Jason, and J will analyze the findings, identify high-impact opportunities to improve the driver’s experience, and begin planning around next steps. We will be sharing more as findings develop.
We’ve now completed three journey mapping efforts, covering the Load Finding experience, the Roadside Coordinator experience, and now the driver’s “Week in the Life” experience. Over time, we want to build a living library of core experiences at Nussbaum so that anyone who engages with our users, across any team, has a foundational understanding of what people actually go through.
The heart of the matter is: the better we understand the experience, the better we can build for it.
So let’s continuously improve together! If you have thoughts or suggestions for our products/technology, send an email to productfeedback@nussbaum.com.
Further Reading
Nielsen Norman Group, Journey Mapping 101 – NN/G
Nielsen Norman Group, The Definition of User Experience (UX) – NN/G
