Route live monitoring for municipal waste collection

Live monitoring of routes is one of the critical features of WasteHero waste management software. With this feature, we aim to provide a more efficient and insightful way to monitor everyday waste collection routes.

Web App

2B/2G

Routing

Company

WasteHero

Project year

2022・Ongoing

My role

Design Lead

Responsibility

User research・Wireframing・Visual design・Hand-off

Project story Objectives Problem mapping Solutions

Project story

Background

Efficient waste management necessitates seamless coordination of various roles and tasks, with route planning emerging as a pivotal component. Amidst WasteHero's customers' transition towards dynamic routing, aimed at curbing carbon emissions and enhancing collection efficiency, the significance and complexity of route planning and monitoring have escalated. As the demand for modifying and optimizing stops on routes continues to increase, it becomes imperative to maintain a clear visualization of the status of each stop. Moreover, the collaborative relationship between truck drivers and route planners has evolved, rendering traditional route monitoring methods unsuitable for this modern workflow. Presented below is the current workflow of a route planner:

The two main issues highlighted in red and blue has lead to the project scope:

Problem 01

It is difficult to understand the insight behind the table view

Difficult to have instant insight on how to allocate stops to all driver and balance their workload.
Hard to know when to optimise the route or modify route in order to facilitate drivers’ work process.

Problem 02

It is taking tremendous time to make bulk changes on route.

Adding, removing, swapping stops between routes is complex.
Process to switch driver for different routes is complex.
Time-consuming to constantly switching between the views.

Stakeholders & Route planning ecosystem

The route planner will be the primary user group for the live monitoring view, and the workflow of the route planner will have direct influences toward drivers and citizens. The potential interaction flow is presented in the graph.

1
Route planners to Drivers
Ensuring the route planner can monitor multiple live routes and stops statuses in one view.

2
Drivers to Route planners
Enabling the route planner to perform multiple actions on the route, including bulk editing and creating bulk tickets.

3
Route planners to Citizens
Ensuring the route planner can monitor multiple live routes and stops statuses in one view.

4
Drivers to Citizens
Enabling the route planner to perform multiple actions on the route, including bulk editing and creating bulk tickets.

Objectives

At present, our route detail view used by route planners for route monitoring has proven inadequate in meeting their needs for efficient and data-driven decision-making. To address this issue, we are working on developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for an entirely new route monitoring view. This new view will incorporate the highlight address in the project scope, including:

Provide relevant route data enable efficient data-driven decision

A
Ensure data hierarchy
Restructure the data hierarchy to match route planner’s workflow.

B
Provide customizable data insight
Ensuring the route planner can monitor multiple live routes and stops statuses in one view.

C
Enhance data visibility & visualization
Providing better data visualization on complex data. Allowing route planner to grasp the insight in few second.

Shorter time on making bulk changes on route

A
Environment build for massive task
Ensuring the route planner is offered a transparent and flexible workspace.

B
Seamless stakeholder communication
To enhance work efficiency, it is crucial to find solution for the siloed communication channel.

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Outcome & Impact

This project is under development phase. However, after initial user research with the prototype, we expect to achieve:

Clear information hierarchy

Ensuring the route planner can monitor multiple live routes and stops statuses in one view.

Simplify bulk actions processes

Enabling the route planner to perform multiple actions on the route, including bulk editing and creating bulk tickets.

Date-driven decisions

Making it easier for route planners to gain insights from everyday route performance, hence being able to make data-driven decisions.

Next step

Make timeline component more flexible

To provide users more control over the view, we will adopt a modular approach.

Gather user feedback

Upon the initial release, we will regularly gather user insights and feedback.

Run in small steps

Emphasize iterative and incremental progress, allowing for continuous improvement and quick adaptations.

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