Case Study · Mobile · 0 → 1 · Japan
Designing a driver app for scan, memorize, act.
A 0→1 last-mile delivery app for Espoirer's Japanese couriers — built for drivers who don't read the screen, they glance at it.
Scope of work
- Product
- Role
- Methods
- Focus
- Outcome
Key insight · 8 contextual interviews
Drivers don't read the app — they scan, memorize, and act.
Field observation · ride-along with 8 Japanese couriers
The redesign
From a paper-equivalent screen to a scannable hierarchy.
The original list — paper translated to phone
Scannable cards built around the driver's eye-path
Information architecture
The nested complexity behind each delivery.
A single order isn't an order — it's a chain. Different recipients within the same room, different rooms within the same building, different buildings within the same area, all needing to resolve to one card the driver can act on.
Highlighted nodes show one driver's actual delivery to Yamamoto-san at building 4-2-3, room 203 — two of the five packages routed to the same physical address.
In production
Screens drivers actually use, every shift.
Localization
Built around how Japanese addresses actually work.
Japan's addresses go area → block → building → room — the opposite hierarchy from Western "house number, street". Forcing Western patterns onto a Japanese delivery list breaks every driver's mental model.
Address rendering, typography balancing kanji + Latin glyphs, and a card system that treats the building as the primary anchor — not the street.
Western pattern
123 Main Street, Apt 4B
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Japanese pattern · used by Espoirer
渋谷区 桜丘 4-2-3 · 203
Shibuya-ku · Sakuragaoka · Block 4-2-3 · Room 203
Results
Measurable impact on daily operations and growth.
Delivery success
92% → 97%
Order volume
more than doubled
Steps in the complete
end-to-end user flow
Takeaways
2B internal logic is a different shape of complexity.
"The internal business logic of 2B products is very complex, with many intersection points. The hard part is ensuring data and process correctness end-to-end — even when each team is responsible for a different feature set."
Example — when scanning packages before delivery, if the driver scans several in a certain range in advance, location accuracy drops and an error fires. Should the system judge the error after the delivery method, or give the driver authority to override? Decisions like this don't sit in any wireframe.
"To design a 0→1 product, you also design the seams between feature sets owned by other groups. The synchronous design considers smooth flow of connection — not just your own surface."