William Bruno
06 · Case study

FedEx Address Book

Role

Senior UX Designer

Scope

Usability research & interaction design

Studio

Tank Design · 2022

Discipline

Functional alignment

FedEx Address Book redesign showing contact list, import flow, and address form across multiple screen states

Years of friction. One clean tool.

Context

FedEx’s address book is one of the most-used tools in their shipping ecosystem, relied on by enterprise shippers managing thousands of contacts. It hadn’t been redesigned in years and the problems had compounded.

Challenge

The legacy address book had known usability issues, but no one had a clear picture of how they connected or which users were most affected. The same tool serves an enterprise shipper with thousands of contacts and a retail user shipping twice a year.

Solution

I led the usability research that surfaced what was actually broken, and the redesign that followed. Five clear patterns became the organizing logic: modernize, clarify, anticipate, simplify, flex.

Impact

A unified cross-platform experience serving 220+ countries, with a spec-ready handoff engineering could build without interpretation.

01 · The challenge

Research, not assumptions.

The legacy address book had known usability issues, but no one had a clear picture of how they connected or which users were most affected. Before designing a solution, we had to understand the real scope of the problem.

That meant starting with research, not assumptions. The same tool serves an enterprise shipper with thousands of contacts and a retail user shipping twice a year.

Legacy FedEx Address Book with annotated usability issues including dated layout and unhelpful errors
Legacy experience: years of complexity without a cohesive redesign.
02 · The research

Five clear patterns in how users were struggling.

Research surfaced five clear patterns in how users were struggling. Those patterns became the organizing logic for the redesign: modernize, clarify, anticipate, simplify, flex.

Affinity mapping board grouping interview observations into research themes for FedEx Address Book
Affinity mapping: clustering observations into the five themes that drove the design.
03 · The redesign

Small interaction. High frequency. Get the details right.

The work focused on reducing steps for the most common tasks while keeping edge cases reachable. Address entry is a small interaction with high frequency. The details matter more than they look like they should.

Redesigned FedEx Address Book landing page with clean contact list, filters, editable columns, and batch actions
Contacts landing page: modernized list with filters, editable columns, and direct ship action.
Redesigned create-contact flow with verified address entry, recipient details, and tagging in one focused dialog
Create flow: one focused dialog, no detours.
Tag views interface allowing enterprise users to organize thousands of contacts into custom labeled groups
Tag views: enterprise-grade organization for thousands of contacts.
Filtering and search interface for FedEx Address Book contacts including location, tag, and recent activity filters
Filters: search, refine, and act in fewer steps.
5
Research themes

shaped every downstream design decision.

220+
Countries

served by the unified cross-platform experience.

Spec-ready
Handoff

engineering could build without interpretation.