Overview

Kael is an operations management platform for companies with field teams — logistics, healthcare transport, facility management. Their tool connects dispatchers, drivers, and managers in a single system that tracks assignments, routes, and real-time status updates.

The platform had grown organically over 3 years, feature by feature, without a cohesive design vision. Operations managers were losing hours daily to a tool that was supposed to save them time.

The Challenge

Kael's core user — the operations manager — juggles dozens of moving parts simultaneously. Drivers in the field, pending assignments, vehicle breakdowns, schedule changes. They need to see everything at once and act fast.

The existing interface couldn't keep up:

• Critical alerts (missed pickups, vehicle breakdowns) were buried in a general notification feed with no priority system

• Assigning trips required 6+ clicks through multiple screens — dispatchers were using spreadsheets instead

• No real-time map view — managers had to call drivers to know their location

• Shift planning was entirely manual with no optimization suggestions

The Approach

I spent the first two weeks shadowing operations managers at three different Kael customers. Watching them work revealed problems they didn't even articulate in interviews — workarounds they had normalized, information they were tracking on sticky notes instead of in the platform.

Command center dashboard

Redesigned the main screen as a true operations command center. Live map with vehicle locations on the left, prioritized alert feed on the right, key metrics (on-time %, capacity, waiting times) across the top. One screen, complete situational awareness.

Quick-action dispatch

Reduced trip assignment from 6 clicks to 2. Drag-and-drop from unassigned trips to available drivers directly on the map. The system auto-suggests optimal assignments based on proximity and schedule — dispatcher confirms

Smart shift optimizer

Built a shift planning view with an AI-assisted optimizer. The system flags unassigned trips, vehicle outages, and schedule conflicts — then suggests solutions. Managers review and approve instead of building from scratch.

The Results

Kael's operations managers went from dreading the platform to depending on it. Trip assignment time dropped drastically. Response to critical alerts improved significantly. Each dispatcher saved meaningful time daily — time that went back into actually managing operations instead of fighting the tool. Within 6 months, customer retention improved substantially and the redesigned platform became their primary competitive advantage in sales demos.