GBM Tech & Control · Case study · Leonardo Ribeiro

GBM Tech

A planner at a desk.An operator on a yard.One product.
Role

Product Designer

Period

2024 / 2025

Product

Port operations

Design team

Three, led by me

02 · Research in context

I went to the terminal.

Usability research on the job, with operators, while the port kept running. The problems that mattered turned out to be physical.

Glare

A well-contrasted screen becomes a mirror in direct sun.

What changedContrast raised on every outdoor view.
Gloves

A 44px target starts behaving like a 20px one.

What changedMinimum target size increased in the field tools.
One hand

The other hand is already holding something.

What changedPrimary actions moved into one-handed reach.
The clock00:00

A truck is waiting. Every extra step has a cost you can hear.

What changedSteps removed from the most frequent task.
03 · Leading the work

Leading two designers.

0

designers reporting into the work

0

months leading the team

0

device classes, built in parallel

Before

Criteria written down before the work started.

During

Reviews measured against the criteria we agreed on.

After

The second decision made without me in the room.

04 · The system underneath

Consistency had to come from the tooling.

Three designers, two device classes, one product.

I put the system in place before the team needed it, so nobody had to police it in review. One set of tokens fed both surfaces, and the rules travelled with the components instead of living in someone's head.

Single sourceOne token set
The officeDense planning dashboards, large screen, both hands, time to think.
The yardField tools, one hand, direct sun, a truck waiting.
Scope

Both device classes drawn from one token set.

Ownership

I wrote it, the team worked inside it, reviews got shorter.

Lifespan

It outlived every screen we drew on top of it.

05 · Carried forward

What I took from it.

01

Research in context beats research on a call.

02

Design for the hardest position first, and the easy one comes free.

03

A team scales on written criteria.

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GBM Tech & Control · 2024 / 2025
Leonardo Ribeiro
GBM Tech & Control
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