Designing for a driver who can barely stop to look.
An early concept: a logistics app for Indian truck drivers. The user can hardly read, has a few seconds to decide, and is steering a loaded truck while doing it.
2017 concept · never shipped
Drivigo
Self-initiated · designed solo
02 /The problem
Design for the user almost nobody designs for.
The interesting problem here was never the logistics. It was the person. The work names him plainly: primarily male, roughly twenty to fifty, mostly from rural India, comfortable in a local language rather than English, and treating a smartphone as something close to rocket science. On top of all that, he uses the app while driving. Low literacy, low familiarity, and almost no spare attention, all at once.
For this user the app is not a convenience. It is income, and it is safety. A confusing screen does not just annoy him. It pulls his eyes off the road, or it costs him a trip. That raises the stakes on the few moments the app actually owns: accept the trip, start on time, stay on route, deliver, and call for help if something goes wrong.
03 /How I thought about it
Constraints first, screens last.
Even as early work, the method already runs in a recognisable order: empathy map, then persona, then process flow, then wireframes, then a small system, then the screens. The thread through all of it is the same. Reduce what the driver has to do, and make the few high-stakes moments impossible to get wrong.
Cognitive load is the enemy
The while-driving screen is stripped to glances: distance and time remaining, the address, an SOS, and a confirmation he is on time and on route. Less to read means less time with eyes off the road.
Built for low literacy and local language
The design leans on icons, colour and numbers rather than dense text, and treats change language as a first-class choice, not a buried setting.
Accepting a trip is a deliberate act
A loud notification and a swipe-to-accept, on purpose. A high-stakes action should never be triggered by a stray tap. Confirmation turns green to signal it is done.
One hand, and a way to call for help
Controls and a direct-call button sit low on the screen, within a thumb’s reach, so the driver can operate and call with one hand. An SOS and a “not in time” path are designed in, not bolted on.
04 /The work
From the driver’s reality to the screen.
The original concept boards, as they were made: the idea and an empathy map, the persona and the full process flow with its SOS and not-in-time branches, the wireframes and small system, and the moments that matter, accepting a trip and the while-driving screen.
05 /What it shows
Early work, kept for what it shows.
Even in 2017 the work started from the user’s real conditions and designed the moments where things go wrong, not only the happy path. The boards label their own guesses as assumptions.
06 /What carries forward
Start from the user’s real conditions, not the screen.
This is one of the earliest things I designed, and looking back the value was learning to let real constraints, low literacy, no spare attention, a phone in a moving truck, drive the design rather than starting from screens. What I would do differently today is obvious: put it in front of real drivers. In 2017 I designed for this user from research and assumption, not with them. That instinct, to design the unhappy path and to name my own assumptions out loud, is the part I carry into everything since.
Role and credit: an early, self-initiated concept designed solo by me in 2017, in Sketch and Illustrator.
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Summarize this case
1. A 2017 self-initiated concept: a logistics app for Indian truck drivers, a low-literacy user with seconds to decide and one hand on the wheel.
2. Almost every choice came from constraints first: cut cognitive load, design for local language, and make the few high-stakes moments (accept a trip, stay on route, call for help) impossible to get wrong.
3. Early work with no numbers to claim. It is here for what it shows about instinct: 0-to-1 empathy and a constraints-first method that still describes how Abhisek works.