InstaMatic

Overview

What is the one tool I wish I had?  

After having spent 15 years in sales of luxury watches, including brands like:  Rolex, Omega, Breitling, and Patek Philippe.  I wanted to build a UX application that solved a problem.  I wanted to give salespeople an amazing tool that would help increase their sales, their productivity, and their overall professionalism.  I thought about all the problems retailers faced and wanted to come up with a solution.  I thought to myself, “As a salesperson, what is one tool I wish I had that would make me better at my job?”  Then came a flow of inspiration of what I should build.  

The Problem

I have spent 15 years watching jewelry salespeople struggle to send a simple photograph to a client.  The clients asks the salesperson to send them a picture.  The salesperson takes a poor, out-of-focus picture with their cell phone.  The client receives an ugly picture, and even worse, a poor user experience.  

Salespeople do not have any tools to help them send high quality images to their customers.  Salespeople and customers are having meaningful communication about watches via text messes and email.  But taking beautiful photos for your customers Is far from a walk in the park, right? I mean, you might spend hours trying to take the right picture. Then when you finally have what you think is a descent image, you spend several minutes trying to describe all the specs of the watch to include in your text.  

Foot traffic is down in nearly every jewelry store in America. The rules of customer engagement have changed.  Technology has created a more informed, more savvy customer who wants to take advantage of the latest technology.  Retailers might think this is bad news.  But guess what, customers still want a personal, relevant experience.

What I learned about salespeople over 15 years profoundly influenced this design. So, I decided to build InstaMatic.  Check out an animation I built that shows the problem.    

Behind the Scenes

The high fidelity finished product starts super rough.  I get my inspiration by sketching fast iterations of a concept.  I spend a ton of time in low fidelity until I have the concept down and I've actually solved whatever problem or process I'm trying to solve.  

InVision prototype

I absolutely love InVision!  After I make my wireframes and high fidelity renderings in Sketch, I sync the files with InVision to create a clickable, interactive prototype complete with gestures, transitions, and animations. This enables me, user testers, and developers to push actual buttons and experience how the app works.  I carefully evaluate the successes and failures of what the user experiences.  What I learn about the user's interactions shapes the changes that are made as I progress to the finished product.

Directed Discovery

I believe the most holistic way to approach the design a product is preached by one of my favorite companies Pluralsight.  I was kindly invited to attend a workshop at Pluralsight in which Nate Walkingshaw and Gilbert Lee taught the process of Directed Discovery.  This process greatly influenced my design decisions for InstaMatic.

Personas

Creating personas for InstaMatic helped me to create empathy and understanding for the people I designed it for. I love personas because they are a relatable snapshot of the target audience that highlights their needs, motivation, behaviors and demographics. At the end, it makes the design decisions less abstract and more human.

VOC - Voice of the Customer.  Even though I have been the customer for 15 years as a watch salesperson, I still decided to get out of the conjecture game and get InstaMatic in front of users to test it.  I felt a lot of empathy for the users, and it helped shape my design decisions.  I stopped guessing.  Users told me specific things that they wanted and needed that I didn't think of, plus they helped me eliminate what was unnecessary.  Bottom line:  Embrace scientific thinking.

Using Personas and research help me figure out who my users were, and what they wanted.  I used data to help me draw statistically significant conclusions and help form my design.  

Style Guide

Logo iterations

I thought I would share my early iterations of InstaMatic.  At first, the name was GemCloud, with a green and grey scheme.  Then, I came up with the name InstaMatic.  "Insta" to signify fast or instant, and "matic" for self-winding mechanical movements inherent in nearly all fine watches.  So, take a look at the progression of style and color in the logo and branding of InstaMatic.   

Product Visuals