SUMMARY
I led an end-to-end research and design initiative to address the inefficiencies in Ninja Van’s new Multi-Piece Shipment (MPS) service to support our growing B2B shipper base in Malaysia. Through field immersions and close collaboration with operations, commercial, and tech counterparts, we identified root issues stemming from manual workarounds. By co-creating scalable design solutions in our Ninja Dashboard platform, we laid the foundation to grow this high-volume segment.

#end-to-end #user-research #innovation #design-strategy #product-strategy

⏰ TIMELINES
Research: May 2024
Design & development: Jan 2024 - Present (ongoing iterations)

👩🏻‍💻 MY ROLE | LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER
◾️ Partnered with Tech Leads and CPO to guide product strategy
◾️ Co-led exploratory user research with Senior Product Designer
◾️ Drove delivery across 2 squads by actively collaborating with Engineers, PMs, and Ops

⚒️ TOOLS
◾️ Sketch, Zeplin, Miro, JIRA

TL;DR

// ✍🏻 Background: Ninja Van seeks to address a growing logistical demand within the underserved business-to-business (B2B) shippers, who regularly restock their products to distribution centers and retail shops. These shippers use logistics arrangements with no visibility over shipment progress. With early success in this growing segment, proven by 10,000 parcels moved monthly and 30+ active shippers in Malaysia, we wanted to capture more share in the space. This segment differed from regular shippers, shipping a significantly higher number of parcels per shipment, causing significant operational problems. Coupled with rapid scaling, there was an urgent need to put in place a digitalised solution.
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// ⚠️ Challenges:

(1) Extremely fast-paced workflow: Speed to market often took precedence over perfect execution. With B2B market capture being time-sensitive, decisions had to be made quickly and intentionally—often with incomplete information. I worked closely with PMs and tech leads to push for rapid testing to support informed design decisions while keeping up with the pace.

(2) Inertia in digitalising B2B’s legacy workflows: B2B shippers relied heavily on deeply manual, legacy workflows. By collaborating early with ops and business teams, we ensured our tools such as Ninja Dashboard respected existing habits while nudging toward better structure.

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// 🚀 Outcomes:

(1) Business outcome: Increased share of parcel volumes from B2B shipper segments.

(2) User outcome: Reduced friction for B2B shippers to ship orders on our Ninja Dashboard through digitised workflows.

// 🛠️ Approach: Capture and retain B2B shippers by digitising the MPS flow while ensuring adoption through ground-informed decisions and operational empathy.

[0] Glossary

“MPS” stands for Multi-Piece Shipment: When a business sends multiple boxes (cartons) as part of a single order (bundle) to the same destination. All parcels must be picked up, tracked, and delivered together.

“RDO” stands for Return Delivery Order: A signed physical document used to confirm that all items in a delivery were received. It is critical for B2B billing and reconciliation.

💎 *I know, jargons haha. But logistics are pretty complex operations and we’re in Singapore after all – the land known for its robust culture of using acronyms all day,everyday lol*

A visual guide on how to quickly understand the jargons

[1] Sizing the opportunity

MPS evolved from a growing B2B solution, serving more than 30 active shippers in the Malaysian market when our business teams tested the waters. Based on historical data from shippers from said trial, each order can include up to 44 cartons, averaging 10,000 parcels per month. Our clients consist of well-known brands such as F—- C—--- (PS: redacted for sensitivity 🌝), whose shipments are used to replenish retail shelves and support restocking for country-wide supermarkets and distribution centers.

However, lack of system support meant these high-volume accounts were being handled manually, risking errors, inefficiencies, and shipper churn. After losing our first wave of MPS shippers due to unreliable processes, we recognized the urgency to build a more robust and scalable product offering via tech solutions.

[2] The need for a solution

At one point, the emerging B2B focus was full of potential, but honestly, a bit messy. I was genuinely eager to be part of shaping something impactful, so I asked (repeatedly!) to join the ops immersion in Malaysia.

Being on the front lines and interacting with the folks on-the-ground meant getting first-hand accounts of processes that avoid any potential broken telephone communication along the way. Eventually, the CPO gave me the green light.

Together with another Senior Product Designer and Ops stakeholders, we spent 3 days shadowing drivers, observing station workflows, and noting down every detail—from carton pickup and sorting to how RDO documents were handled. I made it a point to connect with Ops stakeholders early so we’d have access to the full behind-the-scenes picture to piece together what really happened on the ground.

💎 Food diplomacy ftw – we shared experiences through roti plantas and teh tariks🧋😎

There’s always time for food and stories

In preparation for this trip, I initiated a research plan and live documentation for us to note-take the operational nuances, shared widely across PMs, ops, and design. This helped build shared context quickly, sparking productive debates with our engineers and business leads.

💎 Unexpectedly, this note-taking document ballooned into a 37-pager monster, THAT was how much knowledge we learnt in Malaysia✨.

I have 100s of photos but here are some of the highlights!

Here I’m highlighting top issues we needed to address, some of which became more apparent during the research—that made shippers hesitant to commit to us long term:

Shippers couldn’t self-serve on the Ninja Dashboard, relying on staff to upload bulk orders manually.
There was no way to match cartons to their parent orders, causing confusion and delivery failures.
RDO tracking was fragmented and entirely manual, risking lost documents and revenue leakage.

Success metrics

To measure success, cross-team Product Managers, Product Designers, the CPO and relevant business stakeholders aligned on key product outcomes to work towards increasing volume share of B2B shippers:

Reduce manual backend support while enabling self-service MPS creation on Ninja Dashboard.
Improve delivery completeness during MPS deliveries.
Track RDO compliance more reliably in internal systems.

[3] The team’s challenges & collaboration

This was a cross-functional marathon. To align quickly, I facilitated research sharing and immersion recaps with Ops and Commercial PMs & PDs. These sessions helped frame the ground truth for those who couldn’t join the immersion.

We balanced speed with quality by narrowing scope and validating quickly. Rather than force digital transformation, we supported legacy flows (like RDOs and bulk templates) while introducing smart upgrades like MPS-ready air waybills and dashboard flows. I synced weekly with engineers to clarify edge cases and ensure the designs were grounded — read more about the collaborative experience here! At the same time, my Senior Product Designer looped in local ops to validate whether the proposed flows would work for their teams

And finally, we had to design for real-world messiness: missed scans, incomplete bundles, lost documents. These weren’t exceptions—they were the everyday norm. So the system had to flex around that, not break.

[4] Snapshots: Key research insights and design solutions

From our on-the-ground research and accounts from the business teams, it became very clear: we couldn’t expect shippers to overhaul their workflows overnight. If we wanted to win their volumes, we had to first meet them where they were—then gradually guide the change.

Based on the aforementioned issues, here are some of the solutions we’ve explored to address them promptly.

[5] Outcomes and impact

✅ Achieved outcomes & metrics

The phased delivery of MPS features allowed us to unblock critical bottlenecks without waiting for a “perfect” full-scale solution. Within the first few rollouts, we saw some immediate impact:

⬇️ Reduction in manual bulk upload requests from shippers
⬆️ ~325 monthly active B2B shippers now use Ninja Dashboard
⬆️ ~300k monthly parcel volume from B2B shippers
⬆️ Delivery completeness through bundle checks and better AWB formats

⚠️ Ongoing enhancements

Continued improvements to RDO validation and internal visibility

PS: we’re doing ongoing enhancement to improve the visibility further such as including internal checks and validation of the documentation, so the impact is not immediately measurable for now!

🙋🏻‍♀️ Personal impact

What surprised me most wasn’t just the work we did on the ground—but the ripple effect of how we documented it. We put together a 37-page note-taking doc capturing everything we saw during immersion, down to the smallest operational quirks. It was meant to help us make sense of things internally—but what we didn’t expect was how widely it would be read and referenced.

Then, a Product Manager from a cross-team – I didn’t expect anyone to dive that deep 🫠 – actually took the time to digest our 37-pager observation document. He came back with sharp, thoughtful questions, fully digested the content, and collaborated with us asynchronously to shape solutions.

It showed that pushing to be on the ground doesn’t just deepen our own understanding—it also brings the rest of the team along for the journey. The doc became a benchmark for future research sharing, even if folks joked about its length hehe! 🤣🤣🤣