UX: Port Terminals Towards Digital Transformation (Part II)
How to incorporate user experience into an industry that hasn’t peaked yet.
One thing we’ve learnt while working with port terminals is that, for the business to work in an efficient and optimized way, they require strong logistics and stakeholder coordination (people, processes, and machinery).
Port terminals are moving towards digitalization, focusing on the systems and technologies, but they haven’t focused on UX yet. In this article, I told you why they should do that.
That’s why, together with an interdisciplinary team, we 🚢 embarked on a mission to ensure that the digital products that are used in the terminals are simple and optimize processes in which there’s coordination between the different members of that community.
The design of digital experiences is no longer exclusive to social media, banking apps, or the retail industry. Today, to keep on top of the digitalization trend, it’s key that solutions are centered on the users. In fact, according to the business model we’re dealing with, we can design experiences that also help boost their companies.
Optimization-Based Design
User-centered design entails creating solutions that remove the attention from the complexity of the processes and put the spotlight on what each actor of the community needs for the relationships’ ecosystem to be as fluid and optimized as possible. In other words, it’s key that applications help improve the tasks articulation and that they don’t become a headache for anyone.
Speaking the Same Language to Be More Efficient
Port communities from any city or country in the world are made up of a highly diverse population as regards culture, education, and technical expertise. This diversity sometimes makes it more complex for stakeholders -operators, truck drivers, clerks, clients- to understand processes and technologies in the same way, and in the expected way.
A user-based experience can help break down cultural and specific knowledge barriers within the terminals; thus, knowledge is shared by everyone and what used to be difficult becomes easy.
Centralized Tasks Under Control
At the terminals, there are processes but there aren’t routines: each day is different, and there are actors who need a sense of order and control in their tasks so that they don’t let anything slip. Moreover, they tend to use different communication channels depending on who they interact with: emails, calls, WhatsApp messages, or visits to the terminal. There isn’t a single channel that centralizes everything.
Therefore, one way to improve the tasks’ efficiency entails reducing inefficient communications and offering more structured ways to follow up processes.
Simple Operations to Avoid Doubts
Finally, optimization goes hand in hand with the design of interfaces that reduce the learning curve and avoid technical errors caused by the failure to understand new processes or systems. These must include interactions that users are familiar with due to the use of other applications.
From the UX design perspective, it is also advisable to create visually simple functionalities that lead the users. In this way, the interaction with the interface won’t cause distractions or frustrations in those operations in which digital products serve as a complement to a process that requires agility and attention.
UX to Boost the Business
Although one of the main benefits of UX-based digitalization is the optimization of the terminals’ processes, the effect that a good experience may have goes beyond that.
If we address all the needs in a single place, a positive impact on multiple stakeholders may be achieved. Thus, apart from enhancing processes and the terminal employees’ work quality (reducing training and the reluctance to the incorporation of new technologies), strategies and the service offer can also be improved, which is what determines the success of the experiences we craft for clients and mediators.
