Distinct Packaging Design Cleanup

The Problem

Does this scenario sound familiar? A funded startup with plenty of ideas for a new product hires a top design agency to create their product and a specialty IT firm to develop the technology and they wind up with a product that doesn't quite hit the mark and tech bugs and design inconsistencies abound. This was the scenario that my client, Branch Forty ran into with their latest product "Distinct Packaging" a web site and app that allows companies to design and order their own custom packaging while being able to see a live 3D model of their box throughout their design process. When I came into the fold as a UX consultant, the product was already made but there were a multitude of design inconsistencies and tech bugs due to an initial lack of communication between design and tech in order to create the product. I came in and spent a good chunk of my time redoing the UI design in order to hit an aggressive deadline and foster a better level of communication between design, product and tech. In order to do so, we had weekly calls as a team (which the initial process didn't have) along with individual meetings with product and tech along with both Zeplin specs and old school pdf docs in order to help tech understand what the client wanted. I leaned on the side of clarity over brevity when it came the spec handoff process since the dev team was remote in India.

The Process

For this endeavor, speed was at the utmost importance for the client. I leaned on my ability to use my UX eye and best practice while updating the design along with collaborating with the client and using feedback on the business side to weigh important design decisions such as creating a feature tour using Inline Manual, a SASS product for companies to create coach marks, tool tips and feature tours with built in analytics. While the user research for this initial sprint was lighter than I had hoped, I still was able to conduct guerrilla user testing sessions with friends, family and fellow designers who would actually use the product at their companies. We were also able to utilize feedback from trade show product demos with potential clients to refine the product. After creating design concepts based on feedback and my sessions with the client, we would introduce tech as soon as possible to weigh in on the feasibility of concepts through LOE documentation.

The Result

After our initial three month sprint, we re-designed the product to the client's liking, hit our initial launch deadline, and cultivated a healthy relationship between product, tech and design which will help all parties involve not have to re-develop anything again and the client is now satisfied with the experience. They are currently in the process of scaling their business by marketing their product with the new UI for the box builder developed and in production, check it out yourself at distinctpackaging.com (note: Additional UI changes have been made to the live site since I left the project).