A container terminal runs on a paradox: every box is tracked by systems, but the person touching it works by voice and paper. The yard checker's day happens outdoors, gloves on, phone in one hand: gate-in inspections on paper run sheets, positions shouted over VHF radio, damage reported after the fact. Shadowing checkers across two shifts put numbers on it: 14 to 18 inspections a day, a quarter of priority job windows missed while information travelled by voice, and a median of 40 minutes between spotting damage and the coordinator hearing about it. Trucks queue at the gate for every one of those minutes.

I designed Quayside around the constraints that kill the obvious solutions. Gloves mis-tap, so no critical action can live on a small target: committing an inspection is a slide. Sun glare kills subtlety, so state is carried by weight and color, never by nuance. The damage report is a legal document (the EIR), so evidence can't be an afterthought. It has to be captured inside the walkaround, not reconstructed at a desk. And the checker talks to one coordinator, not a contact list. What comes out of those constraints is not a digitized run sheet: it's one queue sorted by window, an inspection that builds the report as you walk the box, and a yard map that answers position without touching the radio.

Key Decisions

One queue, sorted by window: The run sheet orders jobs by when they came in; the yard punishes you by when they close. The queue leads with the job that expires first, and priority is a flag, not a folder. Rejected: coordinator-defined manual ordering. The cost: checkers give up control of sequence, so every card states its window upfront to earn that trust.

Slide to commit: Starting an inspection and submitting an EIR are slide gestures. A glove brushing the screen cannot trigger what a deliberate thumb-drag can. Rejected: confirmation dialogs: they double the taps in the rain. The cost: a gesture is less discoverable than a button, so the slider labels itself with its action.

The report builds itself during the walkaround: Each checklist item accepts photos and severity in place; by the sixth point, the EIR exists. Rejected: a separate "file damage report" flow. The cost: the checklist screen carries more weight, so anything not needed mid-walk was pushed out of it.

The job card lives inside the chat: When the coordinator flags a box, the container card is pinned in the thread. "Which one?" is never asked over the radio again. Rejected: a notifications-only dispatch. The cost: chat becomes a second dispatch surface, so accept/decline stays in notifications to keep one source of truth.