Open the number. See the story.
From a dashboard you arrange, to an app you build, to a report you can open and read like a page.
MoveMatrix · · 2 min read
This is a story in three parts, told at the end because the end is where it made sense.
In June the dashboard became yours to arrange: rides today, cars on shift, the airport wave, the account that books the most. Vehicles and accounts got dashboards of their own. A dispatcher and an owner no longer had to start from the same page with different numbers hidden.
An app you build
In August the same idea reached the driver's phone. Driver screens became composable in the App Builder, and the apps it builds know who they are for: a driver, a dispatcher, an account manager, a visitor in the town. The parts are shared; the composition is not. A shuttle operation's driver app shows the run and the seats. A black car operation's shows the account and the regular's preferences. Neither sees the other's screens.
This grew out of the market app configuration from July. Once a town's screens could be composed from parts, there was no reason the operator's and the driver's could not be.
A number is a question. Open the report to see what it is made of.
Open it to the detail
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland (1996): “Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand”
In September we made the detail a page of its own. Every figure carries its unit and its period. Open it to see what it is made of, with the people and accounts behind it, over the time window you choose. The chart stays put while you read the rows.
A figure about drivers opens to the drivers. One about a place opens to the place. You reach the record itself, not another summary.
Why this took three tries
Each part earned its keep once the next existed. First you could arrange what you wanted to watch, then build the page around it, then open anything that made you curious. We would not have found the third without shipping the first two.