Device Agnosticism — The success formula for next-gen fleet solutions
Your fleet can be anywhere at any time, just like you. Intelematics has designed a device-agnostic fleet management portal to deliver maximum flexibility and a seamless user experience.
In today’s business environment, mobility and remote working are key, and that means that most people will be using a variety of devices to access the information and functionality they need.
Working with our customers in the fleet management space, we have realised that ease of use, consistency of information and accessibility are critical to customer satisfaction.
Our end-user, the fleet manager, might use a laptop in the office, a smartphone when they are on the road, or might prefer a tablet device to monitor and manage their fleet. They could be accessing it at any time of the day.
Consistency is key
In many cases, they might be working in a bring your own device (BYOD) environment, where they get their preferred device to work because they find it easier to use. But while they might be using a range of devices, they want consistency when accessing relevant information across systems and apps.
For fleet managers using Intelematics CONNECT, this means accessing our fleet portal to understand the location of their drivers and vehicles, planning the deployment of assets, viewing trip logs, viewing issues with their assets, setting service reminders for their fleet vehicles and analysing valuable reports.
Device agnosticism
Efficiency requires that the fleet managers accessing the CONNECT portal have a consistent user experience across all the devices they use. Wasting time and effort figuring out the different displays and user interfaces as they manage the complex deployment and monitoring of their fleets, is unacceptable.
For this reason, Intelematics is committed to using responsive web design in creating our fleet portal, so the user experience is intuitive and the same across all devices. Responsive design is an approach of creating websites where the site adapts to the device it is displayed on. Another way to describe it is “device agnosticism.”
While the display resizes automatically regardless of device, the font size, layout and navigation change seamlessly to the dimensions of the screen being used.
Building a seamless experience
We achieve responsiveness for our portal using the CSS framework, Bootstrap which allows creating responsive grid layouts. For example, the below asset list page displays a list of vehicles in the fleet and their locations. This information is displayed side by side on a larger screen like a desktop or a larger laptop.
On tablets and smartphones, users scroll vertically, so our portal display reconfigures the panels to make this easier, stacking them one on top of the other.
We use a combination of responsive and adaptive approaches to designing our webpages, so the layout also changes to provide optimal user interaction for the device it’s displayed on. For example, the menu panel displayed on larger devices like desktops changes into the standard hamburger menu on mobile devices.
This approach’s advantage is that it makes for a more seamless user experience and makes it easier to quickly roll-out new features.
The keys to a successful modern business are flexibility, mobility, and a seamless user experience.
Intelematics CONNECT’s fleet management portal has the functionality and capability a modern fleet manager needs. We have chosen responsive web design for a specific reason: to maximise the user experience so that fleet managers can focus on their jobs without wrestling with challenging to use, clunky technology.
