Matching tracking with the real world
Brenntag international profit-oriented company (B2B)
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Client
BRENNTAG
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Industry
CHEMICALS
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Service
UX/UI DESIGN
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Team Setup
ME + LEAD DESIGNER + RESEARCHER + PM
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Timeline
7 months
Context
The catalist for change
Brenntag, as the largest chemical supplier company worldwide, delivers chemicals to a wide range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food and beverages, personal care, automotive, and manufacturing.
For these clients, delivery times aren’t just important—they are critical for improving planning, minimizing disruptions, and optimizing the supply chain.
However, Brenntag’s non-digitized tracking process couldn’t guarantee accurate information and often led to dissatisfaction. The goal was to create a standardized digital workflow that would allow tracking the actual status of a product within the delivery process.
Thereby saving money spent on personnel handling client calls.
Note to the reader: limited amount of screens due to sensitivity of information
Limitations of the digital,
frames your ideas into
boxes of miniature.
Tiny grasps of the present,
but it doesn't represent
what needs to be solved.
The journey is untold.
Challenge
Bringing reality into scope
Imagine joining a global company and being asked to create the concept for their tracking system. There’s no existing system to build on—just a blank slate and a request to use my imagination to craft a North Star solution based on best practices and industry conventions.
A great opportunity to unleash creativity and innovation, right? Maybe for some. But I’m a more down-to-earth designer.
I wanted them to realize that while they didn’t have an existing tracking system to build upon, they did have an existing process—one that relied on a person sitting at a computer, manually gathering delivery data from various systems and sharing it with clients.
Instead of limiting our scope to the digital outcome, understanding that largely non-digital process was crucial before designing anything new.
I aimed to design not the best ever, but the best possible solution
My contribution
Mapping the reality
For me, the real question was: Could we digitize every part of this process? And if not, how could we minimize friction caused by the non-digital parts of the journey?
By mapping out the full, integrated process as it stood—while considering feasibility constraints—I helped the team recognize that some critical steps couldn’t be fully digitized.
For example, manual order confirmation had to remain because each order required a due diligence check. Rather than leaving customers in the dark, the design I came up with clearly communicated when they could expect confirmation and what was happening in the meantime.
In those cases, the role of design was to reduce frustration as much as possible.
Service blueprint of the “as is” state of the delivery tracking process
My contribution
Clarifying the level of detail
The comprehensive research of best practices raised a crucial question: what do our clients consider critical information? For instance, many B2B tracking systems display the exact location of a delivery. But do our clients actually need such granularity?
The answer was no. They cared about when the delivery reached milestone locations and how many hours away it was, but sub-locations were irrelevant.
Answering such questions guided the design decisions and helped narrow the scope to the truly essential features.
My contribution
Fighting to break the rules
The company had a design system to be applied, but its restrictions led to a design that at some parts was a painful compromise between rules and usability. Specifically, I was not satisfied with using colors alone to communicate delivery statuses, as it posed accessibility issues.
By raising my concerns and proposing alternative solutions, I ensured that the design had no accessibility issues.
A design system-based approach that raised my concerns due to its color-only status indicators
Outcome
A solution grounded in reality
Based on the client feedback, the concept was considered both valuable and feasible enough to be built.
This was a great achievement, considering that conceptual work often fails due to an inability to balance realistic and overly ambitious design decisions.
