Enterprise Systems
Crowley Maritime
Situation
A freight buyer trying to price an ocean-to-door move had to reconcile trucking, port, and customs broker inputs before Crowley could return a usable quote. Ops needed one upfront price across ocean, rail, and land. The legacy surface was a dense ~20-field spreadsheet-style form that could not satisfy both speed and compliance.
At a glance
People affected
Primary users were international shippers and Crowley quote operators. Stakeholders included product managers owning prioritisation, engineering owning the rate engine and APIs, and compliance owning customs and regulatory data requirements.
The apparent problem
The team believed the quote experience was “too complex” and needed a cleaner UI on top of the same field set.
The problem underneath
Quoting was not one form — it was a fragmented operating model. Route, cargo, schedule, and customs data lived in different handoffs. Rate-engine fields and customs requirements could not be dropped; they could only be sequenced so shippers answered the right question at the right moment.
My mandate
Constraints
Critical decision
Situation
We had to replace a ~20-field legacy form without losing rate-engine or customs fidelity, while making the quote usable for shippers who were not maritime specialists.
Options considered
Reskin the one-page form
Visual cleanup would not reduce cognitive load or change the order of dependent fields. Rate and customs errors would still surface late.
Keep a spreadsheet-adjacent multi-column layout
Familiar to internal operators, but reinforced the fragmented mental model for external shippers and blocked mobile/use outside ops desks.
Three-step progressive disclosure (route → cargo → contact)
Observation
Engineering field-mapping showed many inputs were only valid after route and load type were known — reflected in the portfolio route-first step (gallery) before cargo detail. Compliance required customs constraints with route selection, not as a post-quote legal review — also reflected in the route-step sequencing. Cargo readiness and load type appear on the next portfolio step once geography is set. Design-system documentation artifacts (colour, grid, iconography, components, symbols) record the pattern language contributed with product partners during the engagement.
Insight
Progressive disclosure adds steps and risks abandonment if each step feels empty — but it lets validation and smart defaults run where they belong, and keeps required complexity from appearing all at once.
Response
Design a guided three-step wizard: origin and destination first, then cargo readiness and load type, then contact — with rate generation after the system has enough structured input.
Result
Portfolio artifacts document a roughly 20-field legacy form redesigned into three progressive steps while keeping rate-engine and customs requirements inside the flow. What could not be simplified stayed: maritime weight/dimension semantics and regulatory fields. This documents the engagement design — not an audit of Crowley’s current production surfaces.
Quote sequence
01
Portfolio artifact — route-first step: origin and destination enter before cargo detail, matching rate and customs dependency on geography.
02
Portfolio artifact — cargo step after route is known: readiness date and load type replace asking every maritime metric up front.
03
Portfolio artifact — contact and rate handoff: structured estimate path instead of reconstructing a spreadsheet mentally.
How the system changed
Mapped the fragmented quote path — trucking, port, broker, and Crowley ops inputs — into one route-first sequence instead of a flat field dump.
Aligned front-end fields with rate-engine constraints so geographic data, cargo dimensions, and schedule only asked for what the API could price.
Embedded customs and regulatory collection into route selection so compliance failures happened before a misleading quote reached the shipper.
Structured cargo details around readiness date and load type (FCL, LCL, breakbulk, vehicle) with inline validation and smart defaults.
Connected quote output toward downstream execution language rather than leaving pricing as a dead-end calculator.
Contributed design-system documentation (colour, grid, iconography, components, symbols) with Crowley product and engineering during the engagement — not a claim of sole authorship or post-engagement longevity.
Validation and iteration
Early drafts still asked for too much on step one. Stakeholder reviews pushed cargo and contact later once it was clear the rate engine could not price without route and load type first.
Maritime metrics and customs inputs could not become “simple.” The win was sequencing and validation, not pretending freight quoting was a consumer checkout.
System documentation was contributed with product partners during the engagement so wizard and related surfaces could share one language. Longevity or continued production use after the engagement is not claimed.
Outcome
operational
Portfolio screens show a guided route → cargo → contact flow with per-step structure replacing a dense legacy field list — the engagement design approach.
organisational
Weight and dimension metrics were meant to read as scannable interface elements with Product, not spreadsheet columns. Not published as a measured organisational outcome.
organisational
Design-system documentation artifacts from the engagement record patterns contributed with Crowley product and engineering partners. Post-engagement longevity is unpublished.
Product
What I would change now
I would document the fragmented before-state as an explicit operator journey map earlier in the engagement, and I would instrument step abandonment by field type so product could see which customs or dimension prompts still create friction in production.
Design system
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