Redesigning Shipment Execution at Scale

Silq is a freight forwarding company that helps businesses move goods from one place to another. Each movement, from A to B, is managed as a shipment, with our operations team coordinating everything along the way.

We noticed that while the work was happening in the physical world, our system wasn't reflecting it. Operations teams were exporting their work into Google Sheets to track and manage it instead.

I explored why this was happening and redesigned how they navigate and record their work in Silq.

All the work needed to move a shipment from quote acceptance to invoicing is broken down into tasks. Based on the shipment's requirements, our system automatically selects a pre-defined template tailored to its category and generates the required work for the operations team. But once the work was created, it became difficult for operators to figure out what needed their attention first. Their day-to-day work depended on the tasks assigned to them, so they developed a workaround: open Tasks → export to Google Sheets → filter for today's work → complete the work → repeat the next day.

The key question was not whether the work existed, but which work needed attention now. For operators, this came down to two things: what needs to be done today, and whether any of it is related to air shipments.

Three principles shaped how I approached the new Tasks experience.

Users can shape Tasks exactly how they need, from filters and columns to the specific shipments or organisations they want to focus on. They can save these setups as views, star their favourites, and land on them by default every time they open Tasks. This makes it easy to create different views for different workflows and come back to them whenever needed.

Tasks can be viewed in different ways depending on what someone needs to understand. The default table works well for day-to-day work, while the timeline maps shipments, milestones and completion across time for a higher-level view. Shipment and project displays use accordions to group related tasks together, making it easier to quickly scan everything happening within a shipment or project.

With a single click, from any view in Tasks, Focus Mode gives operators a focused view of the work assigned to them. It automatically pulls in everything due today, including overdue tasks, so they can see exactly what needs their attention without changing views or setting filters. A progress bar at the top shows how much of the day's work is complete and what's still left. It turns a large task list into a simple, actionable view of the day ahead.

The redesign gave operators more flexible ways to organise and understand their work, from focused task views to shipment, project and timeline displays. Instead of exporting work to organise it elsewhere, they could now shape the Tasks experience around how they actually worked. More importantly, Silq became a more reliable reflection of what was happening operationally. Work could be understood, prioritised and acted on in the same place.

Users could move between task, shipment, project, and timeline views without leaving the system, while customisation and Focus Mode helped them work at the level they needed.

This project taught me to look beyond the interface and pay attention to the workarounds people create when a product doesn't quite fit how they work.