A dispatch console that dispatchers actually defend

Loom's dispatchers moved between three systems to assign a single load: a legacy desktop client for inventory, a web portal for carriers, and a spreadsheet nobody would admit to owning. The average assignment took nine minutes and a lot of alt-tabbing.

Designing for experts, not first-timers

Dispatchers use this software eight hours a day. Optimising for a gentle first-run experience would have made their eight-hundredth hour worse. We designed for density: everything on one screen, keyboard shortcuts for every frequent action, and no confirmation dialogs on reversible operations.

• A three-pane console with loads, carriers and map always visible
• Command palette covering every action in the product
• Optimistic updates with inline undo instead of confirm dialogs
• Live status over WebSockets, with an explicit stale-data indicator

The design system came first

Dense interfaces punish inconsistency, so we built the component library before the screens. Thirty-one components, each with defined focus, hover, disabled and loading states, all driven by tokens so Loom could ship the high-contrast variant their night shift asked for without touching a component.

Rollout

We ran a four-week pilot with six dispatchers in one terminal, sitting with them for the first two. Adoption was voluntary and reached 97% within thirty days — the fastest internal rollout Loom has had, largely because the pilot group ended up selling it to their colleagues for us.