A roadside request is urgent, but accepting it blindly helps no one. I designed a field app that gives tow-truck drivers enough context to say yes with confidence — or decline before the customer is left waiting.
Interface studyScroll to unpack the thinking ↓
The roadside-assistance operation depended on fast coordination between the insurer, its provider network and a customer waiting in a vulnerable situation. The design brief was to reduce manual dispatch work without pressuring partners to accept jobs they could not complete within a safe and realistic time.
Roadside incidents are stressful for policyholders and operationally complex for assistance teams. Providers often received incomplete requests through phone calls, had little visibility into distance or expected arrival time and could not easily signal availability. This created rejected assignments, repeated calls and uncertainty for everyone involved.
The app turns each request into a clear, time-sensitive job offer. Providers can set their availability, review pickup and destination details, assess distance and required equipment, accept or decline, negotiate an achievable arrival time and update the service status from dispatch to completion.
The experience made capacity, timing and service progress visible to everyone involved. That meant fewer coordination calls, more realistic ETAs and better operational feedback. The business metrics remain confidential, so the case focuses on the product decisions we could observe and test.
I started by listening for the moments where the experience stopped making sense.
Ride-alongs with assistance providers, 9 contextual interviews, dispatch-call listening, support-ticket analysis and a service-blueprint workshop with operations.
Providers did not reject work because of low interest alone. Most refusals came from missing context: they could not quickly judge distance, traffic, equipment fit or whether a current service would delay the next customer.
Present every operational variable before acceptance and let the provider communicate a viable ETA, creating a more reliable promise for the stranded policyholder.
A prominent availability control lets partners pause new assignments while completing a service, taking a break or operating at capacity, reducing avoidable refusals and dispatch attempts.
Incident type, vehicle location, destination, maximum arrival time and equipment needs are grouped into a single decision screen with clear accept and decline actions.
Milestones such as accepted, en route, arrived and completed keep dispatch teams and policyholders informed without requiring repeated phone calls.
Critical job details remain available offline, while status changes are queued and synchronized as soon as the connection returns.
Two prototype rounds were conducted with 12 roadside-assistance professionals using urban towing, highway breakdown and schedule-conflict scenarios. Testing led to larger controls, a clearer assignment countdown, confirmation before declining and a dedicated option to negotiate arrival time.
Operational speed does not come from removing every decision. It comes from giving people enough context to make the right decision quickly. A next phase would validate live routing, battery usage and ETA accuracy across different regions and provider profiles.