Offshore Logistics Suite
Moved cargo planning off spreadsheets.
Client
NDA, UK
Year
2022
Domain
Maritime · Offshore Logistics
Timeline
2+ years
Role
UX/UI Designer
A UK offshore operator planned supply vessels in Excel. As the only designer, I took it from zero to a launched web suite for fleet, cargo requests and trip planning.
Problem
There was no single system. Vessel and cargo data lived in Excel sheets that were slow to fill in and easy to get wrong. To plan a vessel trip, planners opened several sheets at once and matched routes and cargo by hand.
My role
I was the only designer, working with a PM, two developers, one QA and three client stakeholders. I owned the work from first client interviews to handoff in Azure DevOps. Sprint demos with 10–15 users were my main feedback loop.
Three modules, one data model
I designed the modules around shared objects before drawing any screens. Vessel Lifecycle is where vessels are created, Material Requests is where cargo requests are created, and Material Scheduler is where planners assign those requests to vessels to build vessel trips.
Vessel lifecycle
Capacities entered here become the deck and tank limits planners work against. Vessel records hold dozens of fields. I kept four top tabs and moved the General sections into a side index, so a long record stays one scroll. Units sit inside the fields, and helper text explains the rules behind them.
Material requests
Planners see what is due on site within 48 hours without opening a single request.
Nine cargo types share one table, and each keeps its own unit: m³ for liquids, tonnes for deck cargo, headcount for passengers. The status column shows the full life of a request, with the assigned vessel underneath.
User flow: assigning cargo to a vessel
I mapped the planner’s main path first, then the moments where it breaks: a vessel over capacity and cargo removed from a trip. Each step has one clear next action, so planners never wonder what to do next.
Schedule planning: requests and trips side by side
Planners assign a batch of cargo in one action and see the deck load update instantly. Open requests sit on the left and vessel trips on the right. Cargo moves onto a trip by drag and drop or bulk action.
Future concept
Once the three modules were live, the client asked to see cargo on the vessel itself, not only in lists. We mapped it together at the whiteboard: stops along the route, cargo per location, a gridded deck, the crane, tank levels. The client marked it the “most important view”.
Design concept of the deck plan
The first idea used joystick controls to move and rotate the vessel. I dropped it: planners think “put this basket in bay A17”, not “turn the ship”. Cargo now drags onto a fixed, gridded deck, and the Checks panel flags problems while the plan is being built.
Outcome
After two years of work on three connected apps, the suite launched. The client’s feedback was clear: creating requests and vessels became up to 6× faster than in Excel. Assigning requests to vessels became far simpler, because planners now do it in one app instead of across several spreadsheets.
The deck plan stayed a concept and was not built.
Learnings
In offshore logistics the hard limits are physical: deck space, weight, a sailing time. Spreadsheets hide them. I designed every module around the vessel and its trip, so each role sees those limits from its own screen.