Smart digital products are everywhere. The routing service in your GPS, Siri on your iPhone, and the recommendation services identifying relevant content for you on Netflix, all deliver seamless and intuitive solutions to complex problems every day. Fellow programmers and digital innovators know that at the backend of these amazing solutions is a myriad of tech wizardries like machine learning, mathematical optimisation, and endless lines of code. That’s what makes designing digital solutions so exciting – to use technology and programming to deliver solutions that are almost human in nature.


At Lange, we develop smart products that address logistical problems on a daily basis from network design and inland delivery planning to pricing and vessel load planning. However, designing smart products comes with its challenges. A recent experience during product development for the inland transportation planning engine at Lange illustrated some of these challenges and offered valuable lessons on defining product principles when developing smart solution products.