Matrack ELD App
The mandated electronic logbook for truck drivers, redesigned for non-technical users. Hours-of-Service clocks, vehicle inspections, and roadside DOT logs, with a locked driving mode and an interactive fuel gauge.
Overview
Matrack ELD is a compliance app for commercial truck drivers, the electronic logbook the US mandates for anyone behind the wheel of a big rig. It tracks Hours of Service, runs vehicle inspections and fuel taxes, and produces the logs a DOT officer asks for at the roadside. I redesigned it around one hard truth about its users: most drivers aren't tech people, and many are looking at the screen while the truck is moving. So the redesign makes a dense, legally loaded tool simple to read and safe to glance at, with a locked driving mode, oversized clocks, a custom icon set, and an interactive fuel gauge I designed to replace a bare number with something a driver can actually feel.
The Challenge
An ELD is not an app people choose, it's one the law requires. Every commercial driver in the US has to log Hours of Service electronically, file inspection reports, and hand clean logs to a DOT officer on demand. That makes ELD software some of the most feature-dense, compliance-heavy software a phone can hold, and most of it feels exactly that way.
The users make it harder still. Many drivers aren't comfortable with technology, and the app gets opened in a cab, sometimes with the wheels turning, where a fumbled tap is a safety problem and a wrong log is a legal one. The brief was blunt: make this understandable for someone who isn't tech-savvy, make it easy to move through, and make it safe to use while driving.
Research & Insight
I ran this as two named exercises: Jobs-to-be-Done, to find the real job behind the app, and a Value Proposition Canvas, to map the driver's pains and gains against what the design could actually relieve.
The job (JTBD). A driver doesn't hire an ELD to "log my hours." Put as a job: when I'm on the road under federal Hours-of-Service law, I want to stay compliant and clear a roadside DOT inspection fast, so I can keep driving without a violation, and without this thing eating my attention while the truck is moving. I got there through stakeholder and support-team sessions, the compliance domain itself, Hours of Service, DVIR, IFTA, and driver-facing input through the product and support teams.
The canvas (customer pains and gains). Mapping the driver side, a few pains and observations stood out.
The clocks are the app. A driver's whole day is governed by Hours-of-Service limits, so the time they have left has to be the loudest thing on screen.
Complexity is mandatory, confusion is not. Every feature exists because a rule demands it, so the job isn't to cut features, it's to make each one legible.
The phone gets used in motion. Drivers check status while rolling, so the app has to protect them from a fumbled tap.
Not everyone reads a screen the same way. For a non-technical audience, plain language, icons, and voice carry as much weight as layout.
Confidence comes from clear states. Certified, defect recorded, transfer sent, each is a legal fact a driver has to read at a glance.
The gain underneath all of it was simple: pass the inspection and stay compliant without it becoming a second job. Every one of these pains maps to a reliever, and that value side of the canvas is exactly what the Product Strategy is built from, driving mode for "I can't use this while moving," a custom icon set and voice for "I'm not tech-savvy," the interactive fuel gauge for "read status at a glance," guided flows for the complexity.
Assumptions versus validated findings. I kept everything on the canvas as an assumption until evidence promoted it, tagged with its source. The compliance facts, Hours-of-Service rules, the inspection flow, what a DOT officer checks, are validated and non-negotiable, and recurring pains in the support tickets were strong behavioural signal, so those got promoted too. But a lot of the driver-behaviour calls rested on proxies, stakeholders and support, not a room full of drivers, so I kept those flagged as assumptions and treated a round of driver usability sessions as the responsible next step. Where a stakeholder opinion disagreed with the tickets, I trusted the tickets. The framework's real value was separating "the law requires this," validated and non-negotiable, from "I believe drivers will prefer this," an assumption I still owe a test.
Product Strategy
Each move here is a reliever mapped straight onto a pain the research surfaced.
A driving mode that protects the driver. For the "I can't safely use this while moving" pain, when the truck is in motion the screen locks to a single large gauge and the big Hours-of-Service clocks, touch is disabled, and alerts move to voice, so a driver stays informed without ever needing to look down and tap.
Put the clocks first. Because the clocks are the app, drive, shift, break, and cycle limits each get an oversized timer in its own color, so a driver reads their remaining hours instantly and sees a violation coming before it lands.
Make fuel something you can feel. Instead of a lone percentage, I designed an interactive tank gauge that fills to the real level across both tanks, with combined capacity, estimated range, and a clear low-DEF warning, so one look tells the whole story.
Turn compliance chores into guided flows. To cut the complexity, the heavy tasks, DVIR inspections, accident reports, roadside inspection, log certification, become step-by-step wizards with plain wording, signatures, and honest success and error states, instead of walls of form fields.
Design for a non-technical driver. For the "I'm not tech-savvy" pain, a custom icon set, plain labels, English and Spanish at the roadside, and voice alerts meet drivers where they are, not where a developer sits.
Experience Architecture
The app is broad by law, so it's organized so a driver only meets the part they need, with the clocks always first.
The daily home is Hours of Service: a big circular gauge and four color-coded timers for drive, shift, break, and cycle, with device connection status and co-driver access. In motion it becomes driving mode, locked and touch-disabled, with a "touch disabled while driving" line.
The logbook is the legal record: the classic duty-status graph across the day, a running tally of off-duty, sleeper, on-duty, and driving time, and the certify action that signs a day as true.
Compliance and safety tools sit together: DVIR inspections with a categorized defect picker and driver-and-mechanic signatures, accident reporting as a guided form with photo upload and fleet-admin notification, and a roadside inspection mode that hands logs to a DOT officer through data transfer, email, or the FMCSA output file.
Records and fleet data: IFTA fuel entries, load details, a vehicle list, unidentified driving, unapproved dates to certify, and a live fuel level.
Housekeeping: notification settings for text and voice alerts, sync with services like Highway and Drivewyze, troubleshooting, feature requests, and recent activity.
Interface System
The visual system answers the hardest constraint the research named, this gets read at arm's length in a moving cab, so it's big, calm, and legible before it's anything else.
Big, calm, and legible. A blue-headed, light-bodied layout with generous spacing and oversized numbers, tuned to be read fast and from a distance, because this gets used at arm's length in a moving cab.
Color that carries meaning. Each Hours-of-Service status owns a color, green to drive, blue for the shift, red for the break, purple for the cycle, so a driver reads their situation by hue before they read a digit. Green, amber, and red also mark success, warning, and failure across the app.
An interactive fuel gauge. The tanks fill visually to their real level, pairing a shape you grasp instantly with the numbers behind it, one of the pieces I designed specifically to turn data into something a driver feels rather than reads.
Icons made for the job. I drew a custom icon set so every function reads clearly to a non-technical driver, with no guessing at what a control does.
States you can trust. Certified or not, uploaded or failed, defect added or removed, every important state shows plainly in color and words, so a driver always knows where they stand with the law.
Outcome
As Lead UI/UX Designer at Sieva, I redesigned Matrack's ELD app end to end into something a non-technical driver can actually understand and use safely, without stripping out a single piece of the compliance it exists to provide. Every reliever, the custom icons, the fuel-tank gauge, the guided flows, and the locked driving mode, pulls in one direction: take one of the densest, highest-stakes categories of app there is and make it calm, legible, and safe to use with the wheels turning.
The framework also kept me honest about what the redesign proves. The compliance side is validated and non-negotiable, built on the law itself. The driver-preference side is well-reasoned but still owes a test, a round of usability sessions with real drivers is the next step before scaling. What the redesign does settle is the harder design question: it respects both sides of a driver's reality, the law that governs the day and the road that demands the attention.
