Reimagining the CargoWise homepage

01

Context

CargoWise Next was part of a broader strategic initiative to reposition and modernise the CargoWise platform.

Historically, CargoWise’s desktop homepage had changed very little over many years. While heavily used as an entry point into the platform, it provided limited operational value beyond favourites, recent items, a deeply nested navigation structure, and company news widgets.

As WiseTech shifted toward a more modern web-oriented ecosystem, the homepage became an opportunity to rethink the entry experience and establish stronger foundations for future operational workflows. This was not simply about visual modernisation. It was about transforming the homepage into a meaningful operational workspace.

02

The problem

The previous experience suffered from deep and difficult navigation, underutilised screen real estate, weak operational visibility, and an overall interaction model that no longer reflected the maturity of the platform.

In practice, many users avoided the navigation experience and instead relied on memorisation, favourites, recent items, and tribal knowledge. Critical operational information stayed buried inside modules instead of being surfaced contextually where users began their day.

• Deep and difficult navigation
• Underutilised screen real estate
• Weak operational visibility
• An entry experience that no longer reflected the maturity of the platform

03

Strategic direction

The redesign repositioned the homepage as an operational command centre rather than a static landing screen.

The guiding principles were to surface operational intelligence early, improve discoverability across the platform, and create a more flexible homepage system that could evolve through configurable panels, custom layouts, operational widgets, and future integrations.

Rather than forcing users to enter multiple modules before understanding what required attention, the homepage would proactively surface tasks, recent activity, conversations, operational insights, and workflow snapshots.

04

Key design decisions

One of the most important strategic shifts was expanding search beyond module discovery. Previously, search focused mainly on locating module names. The redesign treated search as a broader operational discovery tool that could connect users to entities, operational records, and active work more quickly.

Another major decision involved restructuring the homepage layout. Secondary content such as company updates moved into a collapsible side panel, freeing the centre of the experience for tasks, recent items, conversations, and operational summaries.

The project also introduced operational snapshots: saved-filter-driven summaries that surfaced high-priority states such as late shipments, unresolved tasks, or workflow exceptions directly on the homepage.

05

Designing the system

The homepage was restructured as a modular operational layer with room for tasks, messages, recent activity, snapshots, and configurable widgets.

This created a system that could serve immediate workflow acceleration needs while also establishing a foundation for future personalisation and progressive enhancement.

06

Collaboration & leadership

The project involved close collaboration across product leadership, platform teams, engineering, design, and business stakeholders.

Because the homepage represented a highly visible strategic initiative, balancing business objectives with genuine workflow improvement was critical. My role involved driving UX direction, restructuring information architecture, exploring workflow concepts, defining interaction patterns, collaborating with developers on feasibility, and presenting rationale to stakeholders.

07

Outcome & impact

CargoWise Next significantly modernised the platform’s entry experience and established stronger foundations for future operational workflows.

• Improved discoverability across the platform
• Better visibility of operational priorities
• Reduced navigation overhead
• Stronger alignment with modern web application paradigms
• More efficient access to active workflows
• A scalable foundation for future personalisation and operational tooling

08

Reflection

One of the most interesting aspects of this project was balancing strategic business goals with genuine workflow improvement.

While the initiative initially stemmed from a broader product repositioning effort, the redesign became an opportunity to meaningfully improve how users interacted with CargoWise on a daily basis.

It reinforced the importance of operational visibility, reducing navigation friction, surfacing contextual information early, and designing platforms around workflows rather than static navigation structures.