DigiBrief
DHL's EMA Linehaul operation briefed every driver by hand: six to seven staff hours a day, on paper, errors surfacing only after they'd escalated. I designed and built DigiBrief, a self-service briefing platform. It returned 1,400+ hours a year and won a DHL Extra Mile Award.
I wasn't in a design post when I identified this. I was on the floor, I saw the problem, and I solved it: concept to live product, with no team to hand it off to. I built DigiBrief alongside my day-to-day operations role and drove the adoption that took it from a tool that existed to one people used every shift.
The challenge
To replace a manual, paper-based operation with a self-service system that any driver could use unaided — and to do it inside Microsoft PowerApps, the organisation's sanctioned platform. No standalone app. No blank canvas. The challenge was delivering a genuinely intuitive experience inside real enterprise constraints. That's the work I value most: good design isn't freedom — it's making the right thing happen within the limits you're given.
The solution
Self-service briefing on arrival and departure, removing the office bottleneck and freeing the team for higher-value work. A live arrivals board — modelled on an airport status screen — giving the team an at-a-glance view of who'd briefed in, who was late, and who hadn't shown. Checks built into the flow that stop drivers taking the wrong unit and trailer before vehicles leave the yard.
The results:
- 1,400+ hours returned to the operation annually
- ~85% driver adoption
- Wrong-unit and trailer errors eliminated before vehicles left the yard
- Late brief-ins and no-shows surfaced in real time
- Operational issues flagged before they escalated
- Recognised with a DHL Extra Mile Award
DigiBrief is the clearest example of how I work: find a costly, everyday problem, design something people genuinely use, ship it within real constraints, and measure what it moves.
