A little-known fact about FedEx Ground: drivers are not allowed to use their cell phones for any reason. Until recently, they used paper maps to plan their routes!  

As you can imagine, this needed to change. 

The Verizon Location Services Design Team was asked to participate in a pitch to build a native app for the new Panasonic devices FedEx Ground would be purchasing for their drivers to use for routing.

We had 18 days to fully bake our prototype and, at the time, I only had one UXer to spare as all others were assigned to other high-priority products. 

First, we set up the roadmap for the designer to follow to hit this tight deadline. Then, we set up several interviews with FedEx Ground drivers to quickly gather as much information as possible about their needs.

By the end of day three, we had completed initial interviews, proto-personas, journey maps, user stories, and an initial user flow. We reviewed, made adjustments, and approved the direction.

We held daily standups with the engineers, stakeholders, and project managers to ensure each iteration remained viable without diluting the end-user experience. 

We reached out to the drivers we initially interviewed in order to confirm the low-fidelity prototype would solve their core needs. After a few tweaks, we built the high-fidelity prototype using FedEx's Brand Guidelines—just in time for the pitch.

FedEx appreciated that our solution not only solved their core needs, it was the least complex of their submissions and we won the contract.

Within two months of dev hand-off, design reviews, and internal QA, our engineers successfully deployed the app for more than 3,000 FedEx Ground drivers in time for the holiday season target deadline.