Every role needs a different first screen
The CEO, the Head of Finance and the Fleet Manager open the same back office, but each one needs their own numbers first: pass rates, pending payments, vehicles due for service.
Emirates Driving Institute: one product language, from the front desk to the driving yard
Designing the operating system of the largest driving school in the Middle East: a back office for 13 staff roles, a tablet for instructors, a self-service kiosk, a student portal and a mock theory test.
- Role
- Lead Product Designer, with a second designer, at Brixio
- Client
- Belhasa Group, Dubai, UAE
- Skills
Intro
Thirteen roles, five devices, one institute
Emirates Driving Institute, part of the Belhasa Group, trains drivers for every licence category in Dubai. Its work runs through people with very different jobs: a CEO watching performance, a fleet manager tracking every vehicle and its service, instructors on the training yard, call center agents, students registering at a kiosk. We designed the tools each of them uses, and made sure they read as one product.
Challenges
Where the work got hard
Data runs across departments
A student belongs to a corporate contract, is assigned to an instructor, a vehicle and a schedule, and pays per stage. One record touches four teams.
Pricing is a product in itself
Courses combine licence types, schedules, stages, fees by gender and persona, and discounts. Staff had to configure it without a developer.
Some users are standing, some are driving
Instructors log assessments on a tablet during a lesson; students register on a kiosk in a busy hall. Neither can afford a dense desktop layout.
Strategy
Map the roles before the screens
We started from the people, not the modules: who opens the product, what they decide with it, and which data they need for that decision. That role map defined the dashboards, the navigation and the permissions. One component library then carried the back office, the tablet apps and the kiosk, so a status badge or a data table behaves the same on every device. The direction was validated with the client in co-creation workshops and refined in interactive Figma prototypes.
Designs
One system, five surfaces
The same components, the same statuses and the same tone, on a 27-inch office screen, a tablet held in a car, and a kiosk in the lobby.
Back office · Desktop
A dashboard for each role
Thirteen roles, from the CEO to the Government Relationship Manager, each with the data they act on. Corporate clients, students, fleet, teams and scheduling share one navigation and one table pattern, so moving between departments costs no relearning.
Students of a corporate client, the fleet, one vehicle's full record.
Back office · Desktop
Pricing and courses, without a ticket to IT
Staff build a course stage by stage, attach schedules, and set fees and discounts per persona.
Setting fees and discounts on a package. Building course stages and schedules.
Back office · Desktop
Capacity before bookings
A yearly calendar shows working days, holidays and leave for every staff member, so planners see capacity before they book lessons.
Instructor tablet · iPad
Assess while you teach
The instructor sees the day's students, starts a session, and ticks each driving skill as the lesson goes. A timer and a single remark field keep it usable with one hand, between two manoeuvres.
Instructor performance overview; a live road assessment.
Kiosk · Touch screen
Register without a queue
New students choose a course, compare packages by price, level and start date, and pick a pick-up point or shuttle stop on a map. The goal from the brief: shorter waits at the counter and cleaner data from the first step.
Student portal · Web
Book the right instructor
Students filter instructors by language, gender, shift and vehicle, and book on a monthly calendar.
Mock test · iPad
Practice the theory exam
A tablet practice test for the RTA theory exam: clear rules, a short video, then 35 questions in 30 minutes.
Impact
What changed
- One design language across five products, so teams can move between tools without relearning.
- Pricing and course setup designed for the operations team, with no developer in the loop.
- Self-service registration and booking, at the kiosk or online, designed to shorten the wait at the counter.
Lessons
What I took from it
Design for the decision, not the department
Asking each role "what do you decide with this screen?" cut more noise than any layout rule.
A shared system pays off at the fifth product
The kiosk and the tablets went faster because the back office had already settled tables, statuses and forms.