Shipped 2021
Orrery Routes
Overview
Route planning for urban couriers, built around the dispatcher
Client
Orrery
Year
2021
Role
Senior product designer
Duration
8 months
Team
1 designer, 1 PM, 4 engineers
Platform
Desktop web app
The planner. Every stop shows why it sits where it does.
01
Context
Orrery runs bike and van couriers in three Nordic cities. Its routing algorithm was good, but dispatchers overrode it on most days because they could not see why it chose a route.
Each override cost time and broke the next plan. Orrery asked for a planner dispatchers would trust enough to use, and correct only when they knew better.
02
My role
I designed the planner for Saltwork Studio, working with Orrery’s product manager, four engineers and the dispatch leads in each city.
01
Sat with dispatchers through 14 morning shifts in the three cities.
02
Designed the map and timeline views that explain each route in the dispatcher’s terms.
03
Made every override one drag away, and fed each one back to the algorithm team.
04
Tested each release on live shifts, with a way back to the old planner ready by noon.
03
Process
Eight months, tested on live shifts every second week. Dispatchers could switch back to the old planner at any time.
Fig. 01 · Override log from the morning shifts.
Fig. 02 · Timeline view with the reason for each stop.
04
Results
61%
Fewer manual route changes after three months
12%
Shorter average route per courier
4.4/5
Dispatcher rating of the planner, up from 2.1
Three months after launch, dispatchers changed 61 percent fewer routes, and couriers rode 12 percent shorter routes on average. The override reasons became the algorithm team’s backlog.
Dispatchers stopped printing routes in the second week. That is when we knew the new planner worked.
Leila Haddad
Head of Operations, Orrery
05
Reflection
I treated the algorithm as fixed and designed around it. Two of the most common overrides came from bugs the algorithm team fixed in a day once they saw them. Bringing them to the shifts in the first month would have saved weeks.
Fig. 03 · Moving a stop to another courier.
Fig. 04 · Courier view on a handlebar phone mount.
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