Ninja Van • 2025

Helping Ninja Van partners operate efficiently

Problem

As Ninja Van scaled its outsourced partner model, expanding our pickup drop-off (PUDO) network to handle seller pickups, unlocking new operational cost savings, the lack of capabilities for third-party partners to operate independently led to increased internal support, ultimately offsetting the intended cost savings.

Solution

Identified an opportunity to boost operational efficiency by reducing partner reliance on internal teams through a self-serve portal.

Impact

  • User: Empower partners to operate more independently and efficiently through a self-serve portal.
  • Business: Establish a foundation for scalable partner operations and sustainable long-term cost efficiency.
Vertical
Commercial, Operations

Role
Product designer

Scope
End-to-end design execution, design strategy, field research, usability testing, cross-functional collaboration

Timeline
February 2025 - Present

Countries
Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia
Research

Partners do not know what is happening on the ground, couldn’t act on issues, and struggled to plan ahead for efficient operations

While mapping the current service flow of the outsourced partner model with business stakeholders, we hit a wall: no one could answer what partners were actually doing day to day. So... why not go down and see it for ourselves?
That’s when we discovered our partners relied on fragmented updates from their drivers and depending on Ninja Van to make operational changes. This led to wasted time, inefficiencies, and poor coordination.

Research planning and findings

I proposed a field study in the Philippines to gain clearer visibility into current operations and map on-ground partner workflows.

I led the end-to-end research from aligning on objectives and crafting the discussion guide, to field execution and translating findings into actionable product direction. The goal was to uncover operational breakdowns and surface what partners needed to operate more independently and efficiently.

  • Conducted semi-structured interviews with 6 partners
  • Shadowed the 6 partner's drivers for their daily pickup over 3 days
  • Facilitated daily synthesis sessions with cross-functional stakeholders to align observations and identify patterns

The full cycle spanned 3 weeks of planning, 1 week of fieldwork, and 1 week of synthesis, resulting in an insight deck that directly informed our product strategy.

Current operation workflow

I mapped the full pickup workflow and uncovered recurring breakdowns. The diagram below highlights where high dependencies on internal Ninja Van team and lack of visibility were slowing partners down:

Insight 1: Partners’ lack of visibility on the ground

Partners were not only relying on internal  Ninja Van teams, they were also overly dependent on their drivers for operational updates.
  • Why it matters: To operate efficiently, partners need visibility to plan manpower and routes effectively.
  • Problem: Partners relied entirely on drivers or Ninja Van teams to manually relay information before they could take any action, often leading to delays.
  • Impact: This lack of visibility led to poor planning, wasted trips, idle time, and ultimately, operational misalignment.

Insight 2: Partners lacked operational autonomy

Partners are unable to make operational changes independently when disruptions happen on the ground.
  • Why it matters: Partners need to make real-time decisions to operate reliably, such as reassigning drivers who are unavailable or monitoring route progress.
  • Problem: Partners lacked direct access to systems that enable these functions.
  • Impact: This led to manual coordination via Telegram or WhatsApp, causing delays and creating heavy reliance on internal Ninja Van teams to manage operational changes.
Approach

Designed a self-serve portal that’s scalable and focused on partners’ core needs

"But why is the solution to build a self-serve portal from scratch?"
‍
We did explore giving partners access to the internal systems used by Ninja Van staff, but it came with major downsides: it risked exposing sensitive data, overwhelmed partners with irrelevant information, and required significant development effort to implement scalable access control.
Validating with partners

Conducted remote moderated usability testing with 6 partners from Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia

Despite initial pushback from my product manager, I advocated for usability testing by emphasising the need to:
  • Assess whether the proposed partner portal could address shared operational gaps across markets
  • Identify missing information needs and evaluate how partners interpret and use data in context
  • Validate whether early concepts effectively addressed pain points uncovered during discovery
  • Gather early feedback, as the portal was a new product with no prior usage baseline

Usability test findings

Partners were excited by the idea of removing the middleman, with many asking, “When is this going live?” — a strong signal that the portal resonated with their needs and showed potential to scale across markets.

However, usability testing also revealed opportunities for design refinement to reduce friction and improve overall efficiency:

1. Reduce use of internal jargons

The term “pickup job” confused users as it reflected internal jargon rather than their mental model. We renamed the page to “Shipper pickups” to align with how partners think — focusing on which sellers they need to collect from.

2. Improve filter visibility

Users initially missed the filter option as it was tucked within a dropdown. By surfacing filters directly in the header row, we made them more immediately accessible, reducing friction and helping users find relevant pickup details faster.
Before
After

3. Improve affordance of icon-only buttons

Icons without labels created friction in understanding actions, especially for logistics operators who tend to be cautious about clicking unfamiliar icons for fear of disrupting ongoing operations.
Before
After

Insights to be addressed in Phase 2

To balance impact with speed to market, we scoped the following insights for Phase 2:
  • Shared driver accounts in Malaysia and Indonesia limit access to key features like driver reassignment and route monitoring.
  • Mobile optimisation is important, as many partners operate on the ground and need a seamless experience in the field.
Solution

The core design principle behind the portal is information parity between drivers and partners

Whatever information is available to a driver, such as route and pickup details, should also be visible to the partner. The key difference lies in the scope of visibility:
Our minimum viable product (MVP) tackled the most critical gaps first, balancing impact with speed to market to quickly unlock the full potential of our cost-saving model. Phase 1 prioritised:

Surfacing route and pickup progress

Gain clearer visibility into pickup status, whether they were completed, failed, or still ongoing.

This enables faster decision-making without needing to chase for updates from Ninja Van or their own drivers.

Enabling partners to make operational changes

Partners can reassign drivers or transfer waypoints directly without relying on Ninja Van.

This helps partners act faster when drivers are unavailable, late, or unable to complete pickups on time.

Providing visibility into seller's pickups

Provides visibility into parcel volume and number of waypoints, helping partners better allocate vehicles and optimise utilisation.

Displays seller's contact information so partners can proactively check on parcel readiness to plan routes efficiently, reducing wasted trips.
Impact

Our goal is to boost partners’ operational efficiency by empowering them to operate independently, resulting in:

We are currently in the development phase and intend to track the success metrics above.

Next steps

We plan to roll out the portal to existing partners in the Philippines to further validate its effectiveness at scale.

Following that, we aim to expand to Indonesia and Malaysia. However, one key blocker identified during usability testing is the widespread use of shared driver accounts in these markets, an operational hygiene issue that must be resolved for the portal to deliver its intended value. Addressing this will be critical to ensuring usability and success across regions.

We also intend to implement DataDog to help us monitor system performance and gain insights into real-world usage patterns.

Reflection

Building my first product from the ground up has challenged me to think holistically

From defining the problem space to shaping solutions that are operationally grounded and scalable. It wasn’t just about designing features, but about co-owning product decisions, validating real-world workflows with users on the ground, and collaborating with engineering to weigh trade-offs.
© 2025 Dayna Wong. All Rights Reserved.