GLS/NXT
Building a Portal to Manage Europe's Growing Locker Network
connecting operations teams, carriers, and locker providers in one tool
GLS is building an out-of-home locker network across Europe. The network spans multiple countries, locker providers, and carriers, all managed by different teams with different needs. The portal is the tool that ties it all together, one place for everyone from country managers to IT support to see what's happening in the field.
Client
GLS/NXT
Year
2025–2026
My responsibilities
Conducted user research to gather insights, User journey mapping to document research findings, AI-driven prototyping for vision alignment, Collaborated with engineering and operations teams, Designing detailed touch points and features for core portal functionality
Additional Credits
Bilal Muhammad, Brian Schrader, JD Willemse, Jussi Aho, Mathias Scholtysek, Mehman Ismayilov, Sanna Tietjen, and many more.
We started by talking to the people who actually run the network. We interviewed operations teams across multiple European markets. Six roles kept showing up, each with their own workflows, frustrations, and workarounds. Three things stood out across all of them.
What we heard across every role.
1
Everyone was the glue between systems that didn't talk to each other
People were switching between multiple disconnected tools just to answer basic questions. Dashboards, provider portals, tracking systems, spreadsheets, ticket tools, email. Some described their role as being the human layer between systems. Others spent hours each week just deciding where to route issues.
2
Six roles, six completely different jobs
A country manager is thinking about expansion targets and network growth. A network operator is handling a live incident with hundreds of affected parcels. An IT support engineer is cross-checking data across three systems for every single ticket. They all needed the same portal, but they needed it to do completely different things.
3
The workarounds had become the workflow
People had stopped waiting for the right tool and built their own. Deployment pipelines tracked in sprawling spreadsheets. Custom color-coded trackers built from scratch because no official tool covered the basics. In some cases, dozens of Excel files had become the de facto system. Not because anyone wanted it that way, but because the existing tools left too many gaps.
The research gave us a clear list of opportunities. We then turned them into a vision prototype. I built the prototype with AI-assisted tooling, which let me move at the pace of a full team. The prototype became the thing we tested with users and used to align ops, engineering, and leadership on where to go next.
At the same time, we started shipping the features that mattered most to our users. From network health monitoring and locker-level diagnostics to carrier management and parcel tracking, I designed and delivered production-ready screens, each one grounded in continuous research and validated through prototypes.
The portal is live and growing. It runs in more than five countries today, multiple carriers use it daily, and it pulls data from various locker provider APIs into one place. Where teams used to jump between disconnected tools and spreadsheets, they now have a single view of what's happening in the field.
A year in, it's the central tool for managing GLS's out-of-home network, with plans to expand further across Europe.
Testimonial
“Simon has a hands-on, get-it-done attitude. He juggles several projects at once without any of them slipping, and still delivers thoughtful design end to end. He works fast and validates through research rather than guesswork, and the results consistently look great. He's also truly AI-native in how he thinks about both product and process. He's been a real asset to the team.”
Mathias Scholtysek