The Challenge
We partnered with a major Canadian telecom company operated two powerful fleet management platforms. Historically, the development of both of these platforms leaned heavily toward feature expansion, leaving behind a legacy of inconsistent user experiences.
Despite offering two advanced, feature-rich products, the company found it increasingly hard to compete with newer, more user-friendly software — both in attracting new customers and keeping existing ones.
To turn things around, the company decided to consolidate the functionality of both platforms into a single, modern fleet management solution with a more easy-to-use, scalable and performant interface.
About Fleet Management
To understand the full complexity of the two platforms we were merging, it's useful to describe their functionality.
Fleet management software is used to track and manage a wide range of mobile and stationary assets. Through various hardware devices (GPS trackers, IoT sensors, etc.) that collect real-time data, these platforms help users operate everything from concrete mixers to agricultural machinery and municipal service vehicles. They serve both public clients, like cities managing seasonal operations, and private companies that are, for example, overseeing logistics or construction fleets.
These platforms offer role-based access for dozens of roles, including fleet managers, drivers and supervisors. Customers coordinate thousands of diverse assets, and rely on the software to have visibility across various operations, to comply with regulations, to optimize their fleet and more.
Redesigning the Approach
Initially brought on to lead a UI merge and refresh, the client and we recognized that a visual refresh alone wouldn't address the deeper challenges. The platforms had been developed with a strong engineering focus, but lacked established processes for proactive qualitative and quantitative user research: feedback was primarily anecdotal, and user analytics were not being tracked.
So, we took on a more strategic role and collaborated with the client on a more holistic approach, embedding ourselves within their team to lead a full product rethink.
Process & Timeline
From Mapping Complexity (phase I)...
In the first three months of the project, we focused on immersion and strategic planning: getting to know the industry, understanding the competitive landscape, analyzing existing platforms and user needs, and laying the foundation for a future product roadmap.
Along the way, we also played an educational role, introducing UX best practices and conducting heuristics evaluation to benchmark against competitors, ultimately raising design maturity across the organization.
We built a shared understanding of primary, secondary, and tangential users from scratch, making user needs central to our strategy and guiding MVP.
...To designing the Clarify (Phase II)
In the following six months, we focused on executing the roadmap leading to the MVP launch.
Working closely with the product and engineering teams, we identified, designed and developed the core flows, balancing strategic business goals with the usability issues uncovered during the earlier discovery phase.
We introduced a structured product development process: each flow was broken into MVP-ready packages, prioritized by the product team, and defined as clear requirements. Our design team then iteratively translated those requirements into designs. Together with the engineers from the client's side, our developers implemented said flows with the design team support.
The Design System
In large-scale platforms supporting highly technical workflows and complex data, ensuring consistency and scalability, especially across large teams, is paramount.
To address this, we started building a state-of-the-art Design System early on. Designed to be both flexible for exploring new flows and robust in enforcing standards, it covered components, behavior, color usage, documentation, and more. The system evolved alongside the product and required continuous iteration to support growing design needs and scale with the platform itself.
Scalable Front-End Architecture
The design system in Figma contained dozens of components tokens for colors, typography, spacing, etc. To avoid inconsistencies and development slowdowns, we aligned early with the team on system architecture across front-end and back-end technologies, ensuring a scalable, testable solution.
We extracted the design tokens and converted them into a Tailwind CSS-based system, mapping colors, spacing, and typography. Each Figma component was rebuilt as a responsive, accessible React component using Tailwind utilities, turning screens into easily assembled building blocks.
Storybook served as the central hub for documentation and testing, with stories reflecting Figma variants, states, and props. This living style guide kept design and development aligned, enabled isolated testing, and ensured consistent implementation. Figma updates triggered component reviews and new Storybook stories, reducing handoff time and accelerating development.
Closing Reflections
We had completed the design of the MVP and were preparing to run the first round of user testing by the time the project was unexpectedly cancelled. We were in a good spot with a clear roadmap and a validated design process in place, and we were ready to move into continuous delivery and refinement.
Though the broader vision was not realized, the work accomplished laid the foundation for a modern, user-centered platform, and we demonstrated the value of design thinking in complex, enterprise-scale environments.
This project stands as a reminder that while outcomes can shift, the clarity, alignment, and momentum built along the way remain meaningful and transferable.
