— 08 · LO-FIDELITY DESIGN
Sketching before committing.
Lo-fi wireframes were used to test layout logic and flow before investing in pixels. Five key screens across the core booking flow were sketched and tested with drivers in the field.
A real enterprise project. A steel manufacturing facility losing days to unorganised truck parking. A pre-booking app that cut driver wait time by 80% — designed and led by me as Employee Experience Designer at Neelkamal Steels.
This was not a hypothetical brief. At Neelkamal Steels, unorganised truck parking had become an operational crisis. No booking system meant drivers arrived with no idea where to go. No slot visibility meant they circled the factory for hours. Queues stretched to 48 hours. Congestion inside the facility caused loading delays, production bottlenecks, and rising operational costs.
The problem affected everyone — drivers losing days of productivity, factory operations backing up, and a supply chain stretched thin. The business needed a solution. The brief came to us: design something that works.
"I don't want to think when I arrive. I just want to know: where do I go, and how long do I have? That's it."
— Rajesh, HMV DriverThe constraint was designing for users I couldn't easily test with — drivers on tight schedules, inside a working factory.
Site visit, driver interviews, mapping the broken experience.
Three pain points, primary persona, design constraints for in-motion use.
Lo-fi to hi-fi. Zone-based booking. Landmark navigation.
Stakeholder sign-off. Prototype handed off. Outcome: 48h → 10h.
When the design changed direction
The first booking screen asked drivers to pick a slot number. They don't know slot numbers — only zones. The entire screen was redesigned. That one piece of feedback saved a flow that would have failed on day one.
Three principles emerged from field research and guided every design choice — from screen layout to what features we deliberately left out.
Drivers make decisions in seconds, often under stress, often in motion. Every screen must communicate one primary action.
Our users are in a moving truck, under sun glare, with 12 hours of fatigue. Design for that person — not the best-case scenario.
A parking app that works for drivers but creates chaos for operations managers is not a solution. Every feature had to earn its place by solving a problem on both sides: the driver arriving, and the facility receiving them.
Three user types, one primary. Understanding the full ecosystem — and prioritising ruthlessly — was the first design decision of the project.
"When I call ahead, they tell me there's space. When I arrive, there isn't. Then I wait. For days. This is not how work should be."
— Rajesh Patel, during field interviewSix phases from a driver's perspective — what happened before ParkHere, and what changes with it.
| Pre-Arrival | Arrival | Navigation | Parking | Active Session | Exit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| User Actions | Calls factory; gets vague answer. Sets off anyway. | Arrives at gate. No information. Joins queue. | Asks multiple staff. Gets conflicting directions. | Finds a spot informally. Risk of being moved. | Sits in truck, no updates, no estimated time. | Manually checks in at gate. Long process. |
| Experience Improvement | Pre-books a slot from the road. Sees real-time availability. | Arrives knowing exactly which zone. No queue. | In-app navigation with landmark steps to zone. | Confirmed, reserved slot. Scans QR to activate. | Timer running. Can extend or end from phone. | Ends session in-app. Automated exit log. |
| Emotional State | Before 😤 Anxious → After 😌 In control | Before 😰 Frustrated → After 😊 Informed | Before 😡 Confused → After 🗺️ Guided | Before 😟 Uncertain → After ✅ Confirmed | Before 😴 Powerless → After ⏱️ Tracked | Before 😩 Slow → After 🚀 Fast & digital |
Every task a driver needs to complete maps to one of three flows. Each was designed to be completable in under 60 seconds.
The IA was designed around one insight: drivers need to reach their primary action (Find Parking) in one tap from anywhere. No buried menus, no nested flows, no cognitive load on arrival.
Lo-fi wireframes were used to test layout logic and flow before investing in pixels. Five key screens across the core booking flow were sketched and tested with drivers in the field.
Every hi-fidelity decision traces back to a field interview, a failed prototype, or a constraint the factory floor imposed. Warm, high-contrast, built for stress conditions.
Design decisions weren't made on intuition. Each one came out of research, iteration, or — in one case — a screen that completely failed in testing.
These aren't projected outcomes — they're measured reductions against a documented baseline. The 48-hour wait was real. The 10-hour post-app average is real.
"This project taught me that designing for real operational constraints produces better UX than designing for ideal conditions. Every constraint became a decision."
Every screen traces back to something a driver said, something an operations manager needed, or a constraint the factory floor imposed. That is the work.