Screenshot of Object Builder interface showing customizable fields and workflow options

Object Builder

Turning complexity into configurability

A case study on Object Builder, a configuration tool that helps users customize core objects to match their unique business needs. I led the end-to-end design, partnering closely with product, engineering, and customer-facing teams to deliver a solution with huge impact.

✅ Faster setup

Empowered teams to build 60+ ready-to-use templates, cutting org setup time from hours to minutes

✅ Rapid adoption

Usage jumped 190% in just 3 months — from 461 to 1,340 custom fields created.

✅ Revenue impact

Instrumental in closing 22 deals within 3 months, contributing $400K+ in contracted ARR

Role

Sole product designer

Team

1 PM, 1 Eng Lead, 2 Engineers

Duration

Feb – May 2024

Tool(s)

Figma logoFigma

Introduction

What is Rose Rocket?

Rose Rocket is a cloud-based Transportation Management System (TMS) built for trucking companies and brokerages. It provides essential tools for managing daily operations, including dispatching, customer communication, billing, and driver management.

The Problem

In the trucking industry, no two companies are the same. Each one operates with incredibly diverse internal processes and needs. Yet, most TMS solutions provide rigid, one-size-fits-all systems that force companies to conform to the software. For years, Rose Rocket followed a similar approach, leading to several critical challenges:

🧱 Lack of customization*

Customers couldn’t tailor the system to fit their unique needs, limiting product fit.

🔄 Workarounds everywhere*

Internal teams relied on clunky hacks to meet customer asks, slowing things down.

🧩 No self-serve options*

Customers needed help for even basic setup—driving up support and onboarding time.

💸 Expensive to scale

Customizations required dev time, making personalization costly and unsustainable.

*Based on over 100+ open customer support tickets from our previous software

Below are snippets from support tickets showing a strong demand for deeper customization and reduced inefficiencies:

It would be extremely helpful if we had a notes field for all entities (drivers, units, tarifs, customers, etc.)

— Trucking Company

[...] there is nowhere to add the carrier invoice numbers on driver bills. This means someone has to go in manually and add driver invoice numbers [...] it adds a bunch of extra steps for me

— Brokerage

Custom fields are a pretty common request during onboarding. Often we direct the customer to re-purpose one field and add two headers ie PO | Ref Number or find another place to put the info but one additional field will be helpful.

— Internal support team

The Objective

Faced with these challenges, our goal was clear:

How might we empower users to tailor the software to meet their specific business needs?

Our Approach

It’s no surprise that tools for product customization appeared to be the obvious solution. However, we understood that unlimited customization wouldn’t be suitable for everyone.

To address this, we focused on solving the 80% of common challenges with standard, out-of-the-box features, while reserving the remaining 20% of unique needs with customizable builder tools.

The first of these tools, named "Object Builder," would allow users to define and customize Objects to meet their specific data-entry needs.

💡 What are "Objects"?

Objects are types of information stored in Rose Rocket, such as Orders, Quotes, Tasks, Customers, and Invoices. Each Object has associated fields for data entry that appear as columns on a board or as rows in a data panel.


Project Overview

Timeline

For this project, we used a two-phased approach to build, test, and iterate on the feature:

Proof of Concept
Q1
Commercial Launch
Q2 to Early Q3

Constraints

Timeline

Deliver an MVP quickly for Sales and Solutions to validate.

Resourcing

Work with only 2 engineers to complete the feature.

Patterns

Use existing UI patterns to help streamline development.

Key Metrics

To track success, we focused on two key metrics:

PRIMARY METRIC

Adoption rate

Measure the number of unique object configurations per organization, indicating engagement with customization capabilities.

SECONDARY METRIC

Closed deal growth

Increase the number of closed deals by improving product fit and reducing setup times through Object Builder’s customization features.


Phase 1: Proof of Concept (PoC)

Our Goal

Object Builder was initially launched as a PoC to our internal Sales and Solutions teams with a limited set of features, including:

  • Adding new custom fields
  • Creating new sections
  • Reorganizing fields

The goal was for them to start demoing the builder in sales calls, demonstrating its potential to prospective customers, and helping us evaluate its functionality and adoption.

Figma Prototype

An interactive prototype of the PoC released to the internal Sales and Solutions team, highlighting key user flows.

Impact

In just four weeks, the Solutions team realized substantial value from the PoC:

Icon depicting templates

60+ custom templates created*

The team leveraged Object Builder to create over 60+ templates tailored to real-world customer needs, greatly improving setup efficiency.

Icon depicting reduced setup time

Reduced setup time to minutes*

Reduced the time required for the Solutions team to setup new orgs from 1-3 hours to just a few minutes

*Numbers are based on usage of .JSON config templates, a tool co-developed by another team for exporting Objects customized via Object Builder.

Feedback

In addition to its measurable impact, the PoC yielded valuable feedback on its functionality and design during sales calls. Shown below are some of these insights and how we addressed them:

Desire for enhanced customization

Users wanted to customize select fields by adding, removing, reordering, and editing options to better meet their business needs, such as incorporating custom statuses for their Order Object.

Select fields could not be customized.

Before
After

Need for flexibility in naming

Users expressed the need to rename fields to match their unique business terminology, such as changing "Partners" to a more familiar term like "Carriers."

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Default fields were not editable and could not be renamed.

Before
After

Clarity on permissions

Users sought better guidance on managing field permissions. Many were unsure about how to handle access and editability when creating new custom fields.

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No guidance was provided on managing permissions during field creation.

Before
After

Challenges with navigating

Users encountered challenges in creating new custom fields—an essential feature of Object Builder—and often had difficulty finding those fields in the list afterward.

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Both the button to create new custom fields and the fields themselves were difficult to identify.

Before
After

Need for enhanced guidance

Users requested improved in-app guidance on the different types of custom fields, along with examples to illustrate when to use each one effectively.

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Field type options were difficult to understand and distinguish between.

Before
After

Phase 2: Commercial Launch

Our Goal

In late Q2, we officially launched Object Builder. Our goal was to equip users with the same tools used by the Solutions team, allowing them to customize their platforms independently.

After addressing all the initial feedback, the full set of features now included:

  • Adding new custom fields
  • Creating new sections
  • Reorganizing fields
  • Edit existing fields NEW
Figma Prototype

An interactive prototype of the commercially launched feature, highlighting key user flows.

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Visual comparison between the PoC and commercially launched version.

Before
After

Alongside the adjustments outlined above, we implemented several other quality-of-life improvements, including:

Improved visual styling

To help provide visual differentiation between the right panel and the center field library, the library was re-styled to cards. Similar to the right panel, field type icons were also added.

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Before
After

Simplified navigation

To streamline navigation, we combined the Fields Library and Internal/External views, allowing custom fields to be created directly within views for easier management and customization.

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Before
After

Reduced visual clutter

To minimize visual clutter, we removed extraneous details, like descriptions in the right panel. Buttons also appear only on hover now, allowing more space for essential field information.

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Before
After

Impact

In just three months, Object Builder became integral to our platform's sales strategy, contributing to:

Chart with upward arrow

Consistent monthly growth

Custom field creation rose by nearly 190%, from 461 to 1,340 fields across all organizations.

Money symbol

Significant revenue driver

Object Builder was instrumental in securing 22 deals to date, contributing over $400,000 in contracted ARR.

Feedback

With the feature now in customers' hands, we used Storybook, Gong and interviews with Support to gather additional feedback. Shown below are some of these insights and how we can potentially address them in the future:

Need for additional customization

Users expressed desire for advanced data manipulation, including complex calculations and the ability to aggregate or reference data across different Objects.

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Concept: Introduce new field types, including formulas, lookup and rollup fields for more complex data manipulation.

Confusion around permissions

Users continued to find managing permissions cumbersome, suggesting that integrating permission management directly into Object Builder may be necessary in the future.

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Concept: Integrate permission management directly into the field creation process in Object Builder.

Cumbersome setup

Users reported difficulty in creating and managing custom fields, expressing a desire to manage these fields directly within the board or record they were working on.

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Concept: Allow users to edit fields without interrupting their workflow.


Reflection

There is clearly a strong market demand for customization within the TMS space. Consequently, Object Builder has strategically positioned Rose Rocket to stand out from competitors by enabling:

  • Tailored custom fields to suit unique business needs
  • Custom templates for efficient setup processes
  • Role-based field permissions to protect sensitive information

Beyond the immediate user benefits, these customization tools also give us a competitive advantage by gaining unique insights into user behavior, such as common field types and configurations.

As engagement with Object Builder and our toolkit grows, it will be exciting to leverage these insights to inform and enhance our core product, ensuring our platform stays aligned with users’ evolving needs and keeps Rose Rocket at the forefront of TMS innovation.