Case Study · Freelance · Logistics

Fidelio

Grew a one screen brief into a whole freight platform, from the first search to the closed deal, designed end to end and handed over finished.

Role
Sole designer · freelance
Platform
Web · logistics
Timeframe
2024 · ~5 months
Client
Fidelio · early stage startup
Fidelio · dashboard
Fidelio dashboard with deal counters, the collapsed search form and a list of searches in progress
Client pipeline with a conversation panel open on a transporter's reply

The brief was a dashboard. What Fidelio actually needed was a whole product, one that sends a dispatcher's search to transporters, gathers every offer and conversation in one place and closes the deal, and none of it existed yet. I designed it end to end, as the only designer, and it was finished and handed over.

At a glance
01

A brief that kept growing

Dispatchers found transporters by hand, and Fidelio wanted an MVP fast. The brief covered a dashboard, but every screen I designed raised the question the brief hadn't answered yet:

Answering them together with the founders turned a dashboard into a system. A lot of my job was mapping the depth nobody had planned for yet, before it surfaced in development.

Early dashboard: recent search chips and the full search form above the list
Later dashboard: the search form collapsed and the searches in progress taking over the page
The dashboard moving on: early on, the search form took the page (left). Once people were searching, the form collapsed and the searches in progress took over (right).
03

Every offer, one pipeline

Each search opens its own client pipeline. Replies land as rows: the company and its rating, the load, the price, and whether they've answered or are still waiting. Tabs split the pipeline into In Progress, Closed, Cancelled and Lost, so a dispatcher always knows what's still in play.

Opening a row slides in the whole conversation without leaving the list, with the deal's key facts pinned on top. From there it's one step to accept an offer or reply, written yourself or drafted by AI.

Client pipeline table with offers, prices and response status
One route, every offer: rating, load, price and response status in a single table.
Conversation side panel with the outreach email and the transporter's reply, with Accept and Reply
The conversation opens beside the list, so moving between offers never means losing your place.
04

Closing the loop

Closing a deal is where the MVP thinking was thinnest, so I designed what happens around it. Accepting one offer ends the search, which leaves every other offer hanging. So the moment a deal moves to Closed, a dialog explains that the search will go inactive and offers to move the rest to Lost, with a "don't ask me again" for people who already know.

After the job, the dispatcher rates the deal, and that rating becomes the company rating shown in every future pipeline. Agents can be rated too, and blacklisted, so over time the platform learns who is worth contacting.

Dialog explaining that closing a deal makes the search inactive and recommending moving the remaining deals to Lost
Rate deal dialog with a star rating and a comment
Closing a deal tidies up the offers it leaves behind (left), and rating it feeds the next search (right).
05

Built for a team

Fidelio's dispatchers work as a team, so the product needed a manager's view as well. A manager sees every agent with their active and past searches, and can log in as any of them to step into their work. While they're in someone else's account, a banner says whose it is and links straight back, so nobody acts in the wrong account by accident.

Around that sit the pieces a team runs on: notifications when an agent closes a deal, and a documents list for CMRs, invoices and packing lists, showing who uploaded each one, who approved it and whether it was sent.

A manager logged in as an agent, with a banner linking back to their own account
Logged in as an agent: the account menu and a banner make it clear whose work you're in, and how to get back.
06

Reflection

This was my first product with no existing system to lean on: no users to observe, no old screens to improve, only a brief and the questions it didn't ask. What I took from it is that on an MVP, design's biggest contribution often comes before the screens: following the flow to its end, so the gaps show up in a design review rather than in development.

The product was finished and handed over. Before it reached the market, the investors redirected the business, so it never had real users.

Designed solo as a freelance project, working directly with the founders and developers. No usage figures exist, as the product didn't launch.