Nearby Messaging is a startup I co-founded. I was solely responsible for the entire product design. Our goal was to build a platform for local merchants to connect with their customers.
I was the sole designer and head of product for Nearby. I started with my vision for an easy to use and beautiful messaging experience for our merchants. The design evolved as we learned more about our merchant's needs and how we wanted to position the product.
The design needed to feel familiar, intuitive, but also fresh and personal. Our merchants loved real user id's and profile pictures. Making them feel more engaged and intimate with their customers. We focused on building lasting relationships between our merchants and their customers.
We wanted to integrate customer management solutions without it feeling like another CRM. Our merchants can quickly favorite a customer and tag the user with relevant tags like past purchases, preferences, and interest.
Our merchants are super busy people. Often juggling administrative duties with customer service, and employee management. We set out to make their lives a little easier. We also saw that they often received a lot of the same questions, so we designed this feature to help them quickly get back to their customers. I envisioned this would one day be powered by a cool AI chat bot.
As a product designer and entrepreneur I believe in a balance of product vision and iterating based on user feedback. At the end of the day, no matter how beautiful you might think your design is, if you're not building something that is usable and needed in the market, it doesn't matter. At the same time, the joy of design is creating something new and wonderful for your users. Sometimes your users don't know they want it until they see it.
I worked on everything from start to finish. User stories, hi fidelity mockups, interactions, iconography, typography, UI/UX, styling, specs for engineering, and assisting with the implementation.