Alpha Cargo

Concept · 2-week sprint — Solo, research, wireframing, empathy & journey mapping, UI, prototyping

A two-week mobile concept bringing air cargo booking, quote comparison, live shipment tracking, and support chat out of desktop-only legacy tools.

Overview

Alpha is a mobile platform for air cargo professionals — freight forwarders, airlines, and General Sales Agents (GSAs) — to book shipments in a few taps, compare quotes across carriers, track the full lifecycle of a shipment in real time, and resolve shipment issues over chat. A single dashboard surfaces shipment analytics, loyalty points, credit limits, and active quotes for faster data-driven decisions.

The problem

Air cargo professionals had no shortage of software, but almost all of it was desktop-bound. Booking a shipment, comparing airline trade rates, or checking a consignment's status meant sitting at a workstation and navigating legacy web portals.

The goal of this two-week sprint was to bring five core air cargo workflows into a clean mobile experience:

Book cargo in a few clicks.
Track the complete lifecycle of a shipment from acceptance to delivery.
Resolve cargo queries through a simple in-app chat with executives.
Compare quotes across airlines and decide on the spot.
See shipment analytics on a single screen.

Conventional air cargo booking through desktop web portals.

The target experience: booking, tracking, and quote negotiation on mobile.

Process & timeline

I structured the two-week sprint across five stages — Empathize, Define, Ideate, Design, and Prototype — using Figma, Balsamiq, and Adobe Illustrator.

Two-week project timeline across research, definition, ideation, UI design, and prototyping.

Five-stage design process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Design, and Prototype.

01 · Empathize — industry & competitive research

Because I had already worked in the air cargo domain, I leaned on direct domain experience alongside secondary statistical, behavioural, and competitive research rather than starting from zero with introductory surveys.

Statistical research (App Annie): COVID-19 accelerated digital adoption across logistics, with a sharp rise in mobile app downloads across both Android and iOS before vs. after the pandemic.
Behavioural research: Mobile app usage consistently outpaced browser and desktop sessions year over year as field and warehouse operators moved away from fixed desks.
Competitive analysis: I evaluated leading air cargo marketplaces including Cargo.one and Cargo AI. While several competitors modernised rate discovery and booking, their workflows remained desktop-first, leaving a clear gap for a mobile-native companion.

Statistical insights (Source: App Annie): mobile app download growth before and after COVID-19.

Behavioural insights: sustained shift toward mobile applications over desktop browsers.

02 · Define — 5Ws, empathy map & journey map

"If I were given one hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute solving it." — Albert Einstein

I framed the problem around the 5Ws:

Question	Framing
Who	Freight Forwarders, Airlines, and GSAs (General Sales Agents) who want to cut the time spent on repetitive cargo booking and tracking steps.
What	A simplified, end-to-end air cargo mobile experience covering booking, e-quotes, tracking, chat, and analytics.
When	As the industry shifts from paper and desktop portals to mobile-first operations.
Where	Across each handoff of the air cargo supply chain — rate search, booking, transit tracking, and exception handling.
Why	So cargo professionals can book in a few steps, compare carrier quotes in one place, and resolve shipment queries without waiting to get back to a desk.

Empathy map capturing what air cargo professionals say, think, do, and feel during daily shipment operations.

Customer journey map tracing friction points across search, quote negotiation, booking, and shipment tracking.

03 · Ideate — user flow

I mapped the core architecture into five connected modules: Booking, e-Quote generation, Track, Chat, and Dashboard.

End-to-end user flow connecting onboarding, dashboard, flight search, quote comparison, booking, tracking, and chat.

04 · Design — heuristics, sketches, wireframes & UI

Heuristic principles applied

Visibility of system status: The tracking module notifies the user in real time at every milestone of the shipment lifecycle.
Match between system and the real world: Call-to-action labels use plain, direct language rather than dense cargo jargon.
User control and freedom: Once a booking is completed, users have an immediate, clear path back to the home dashboard.

Visibility of system status: live shipment milestone tracking.

Match between system and real world: plain-language CTAs.

User control and freedom: one-tap return to the home screen after booking.

Sketches & Balsamiq wireframes

I translated the user flows into rough paper sketches to explore layout density, then built low-fidelity wireframes in Balsamiq to lock in the information hierarchy before moving into high-fidelity UI.

Early paper sketches exploring cleaner, more intuitive screen layouts.

Low-fidelity Balsamiq wireframes across onboarding, dashboard, booking, tracking, and chat.

Onboarding & authentication

Onboarding introduces the five core jobs of the app — flight booking, invoicing and quotes, live location tracking, mobile inbox support, and visual analytics — before dropping into a clean email-and-password sign-in flow.

Onboarding walkthrough: flight booking.

Onboarding walkthrough: quotes and invoicing.

Onboarding walkthrough: real-time location tracking.

Onboarding walkthrough: in-app executive chat.

Onboarding walkthrough: visual shipment analytics.

Sign-in screen with registered email ID and password.

Core mobile screens & style guide

Home dashboard: Surfaces the latest shipment status, loyalty points, credit limit, and quote summary at a glance.
Search & booking: Enter shipment dimensions, origin, and destination to compare flights and either book directly or request a quote.
Lifecycle tracking: Follow a consignment from acceptance to final delivery.
Executive chat & profile: Resolve shipment exceptions inline and manage account details.

Flight search and booking: enter origin, destination, and cargo details to book directly or request quotes.

Shipment lifecycle tracking from entry to final delivery.

In-app chat to resolve shipment queries with airline and cargo executives.

User profile and account details.

Style guide: colour palette, typography, and iconography.

05 · Prototype & learnings

High-fidelity mobile prototype bringing the air cargo workflow into the palm of your hand.

Interactive Alpha Cargo mobile prototype in Figma · Open full screen

Key learnings

Low-fidelity wireframes paid for themselves. Iterating in Balsamiq first made structural trade-offs cheap before committing to high-fidelity screens.
Front-loaded research sped up prototyping. Having the domain model, 5Ws, and user flows locked meant assembling the interactive prototype took minutes rather than days.
Design system thinking scales even on a two-week sprint. Defining reusable colour, type, and card primitives early kept every module visually consistent.