Overview
If there’s anything I know better than any other millennial… it’s antiques. Growing up, my father worked at many antique shops with the pseudo name of “Groovey Tunes”. At an early age, I was brought into the world of music memorabilia, jewelry, and collectables including items such as Pfaltzgraff and Parian.
Antiquing is a great hobby, but the process of buying antiques can sometimes be quite challenging. The industry needed a change and I began working on Snap Antiques.
Problem
Antiquing can often be a very time-consuming process. First you need to find the item that you’re looking for and then you need to negotiate on a price and wait during an extensive checkout process where the cashier records every transaction by hand. All of these minor inconveniences led me to my problem statement:
How do we bring an antiquing business to the 21st century – for the Business Owners, Dealers, and the Customer?
The Team
My team consisted of a few paid developers and I. After running my own small business, Small Squared Designs, I had a few connections and I began working with a few individuals to help with development when needed.
Branson Small
Lead Designer
I began actively designing a year or so upon beginning high school. I realized the potential of good user experience, and set out to add a bit of flare to my brothers development projects. After obtaining my degree in Information Sciences and Technology and Business from the Pennsylvania State University, I went to pursue a career in technical consulting at IBM.
As I have a love for problem solving, simplifying task, and fun projects, I consistently try to and find things to reinvent the wheel. I never anticipated working on a POS for antiquing, but the need was more apparent than ever.
My Role
As the sole designer on the team, I conducted user research, worked alongside my developer to create a universal design system, designed all low fidelity work, created all high fidelity work, and completed all marketing and communications media.
Email communications template for "Forgot Password"
User Research
Rather than creating personas, I chose to interview individuals from three specific categories: Business Owners, Dealers, and Customers.
Business owners – These individuals are classified as the ones running the entire business. They maintain all operations and oversee all dealers and customers. Business Owners have the possibility to be Dealers as well. Business owners are responsible for collecting sales, optimizing workflow, and keeping the business operational.
Dealers – These individuals are the one selling products daily. They rent a booth from the Business Owner and are responsible for managing their own inventory and talking to customers. In theory, these individuals are the “heart” of the business.
Customers – These individuals are the ones buying products from the Dealers. These individuals are the ones buying products including Grandma’s necklace from the 50’s. Retro, right?
Having direct involvement with individuals from each of these categories, I recognized personas in these categories could range in any age, interests, and abilities. Interviews allowed me to collect aggregated in a fast and timely manner.
I was able to come to three specific conclusions:
1 – Business owners need an easier way of managing their business. A major pain point results in collecting sales and managing dealers
2 – Dealers want an easy way to manage their inventory. Not every dealer will want to move to a “newer” system though.
3 – Customers want an expedited shopping experience. The faster they are able to obtain their purchase, the better.
Now to complicated part needed to occur. I needed to design a solution that would satisfy all painpoints in a simple and standardized workflow.
Low Fidelity
My developer and I sat down to discuss the site of the site on many occasions. Among many of our meetings, we came to the conclusion that we would use dynamic roles within the application. By using these roles, we could design a design framework and allow certain components or pages to be shown to users that had the correct permissions.
When designing the low fidelity mock ups, my developer and I sat side by side while using whiteboards and walked through most of the workflows we believed would occur within the application. Afterwards, I went into Balsamiq and creative basic wireframes that we could use as reference points. We knew we’d be coding and designing alongside each other for most of the project, so we didn’t bother creating too many low fidelities as we knew the design would change as we continued building out the components.
All in all, we had a specific strategy and we had a defined process that we both agreed to follow. There’s never only one way to approach a problem. Our way of building out this project showed me exactly that.
Initial wireframes of checkout process - Balsamiq
After several iterations of whiteboard designs, Balsamiq mockups, and component redesign, we were ready to begin building out the basic framework of the site.
High Fidelity
Pictures below:
Login Screen - Snap Antiques!
Account Creation
Reports Screen
Close Register
Conclusion
Snap Antiques has proven to be one of my most challenging design projects to this date. Not only was the design challenging, designing this product while maintaining a full time job has certainly had its moments. My three main takeaways working on this project are as follows:
- Design methodologies and frameworks are for guidance – it’s okay to work outside the box or try a different workflow.
- Focus on the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) - You'll never launch if you too perfect or specific about a design or workflow.
- Time management is key. Life will always throw something after another. It's important to plan ahead and focus on a deadline
Additional Case Studies
StudyWare
Bridging the gap between education and technology. StudyWare offers a creative solution to hard working students within the classroom. Designed during the 2016 SAP Demo Jam competition.
70 Shapes
One shape, two shape, three shape, four. Click and hold until it's the perfect size. Accidently miss the shape, start back at #1. Can you make it to 70 shapes? Soon to be available for iPad®, iPhone®, Windows Phone®, and Android®
Overview
If there’s anything I know better than any other millennial… it’s antiques. Growing up, my father worked at many antique shops with the pseudo name of “Groovey Tunes”. At an early age, I was brought into the world of music memorabilia, jewelry, and collectables including items such as Pfaltzgraff and Parian.
Antiquing is a great hobby, but the process of buying antiques can sometimes be quite challenging. The industry needed a change and I began working on Snap Antiques.
Problem
Antiquing can often be a very time-consuming process. First you need to find the item that you’re looking for and then you need to negotiate on a price and wait during an extensive checkout process where the cashier records every transaction by hand. All of these minor inconveniences led us to our problem statement:
How do we bring an antiquing business to the 21st century – for the Business Owners, Dealers, and the Customer?
The Team
My team consisted of a few paid developers and I. After running my own small business, Small Squared Designs, I had a few connections and I began working with a few individuals to help with development when needed.
Branson Small
Lead Designer
I began actively designing a year or so upon beginning high school. I realized the potential of good user experience, and set out to add a bit of flare to my brothers development projects. After obtaining my degree in Information Sciences and Technology and Business from the Pennsylvania State University, I went to pursue a career in technical consulting at IBM.
As I have a love for problem solving, simplifying task, and fun projects, I consistently try to and find things to reinvent the wheel. I never anticipated working on a POS for antiquing, but the need was more apparent than ever.
My Role
As the sole designer on the team, I conducted user research, worked alongside my developer to create a universal design system, designed all low fidelity work, created all high fidelity work, and completed all marketing and communications media.
Email communications template for "Forgot Password"
User Research
Rather than creating personas, I chose to interview individuals from three specific categories: Business Owners, Dealers, and Customers.
Business owners – These individuals are classified as the ones running the entire business. They maintain all operations and oversee all dealers and customers. Business Owners have the possibility to be Dealers as well. Business owners are responsible for collecting sales, optimizing workflow, and keeping the business operational.
Dealers – These individuals are the one selling products daily. They rent a booth from the Business Owner and are responsible for managing their own inventory and talking to customers. In theory, these individuals are the “heart” of the business.
Customers – These individuals are the ones buying products from the Dealers. These individuals are the ones buying products including Grandma’s necklace from the 50’s. Retro, right?
Having direct involvement with individuals from each of these categories, I recognized personas in these categories could range in any age, interests, and abilities. Interviews allowed me to collect aggregated in a fast and timely manner.
I was able to come to three specific conclusions:
1 – Business owners need an easier way of managing their business. A major pain point results in collecting sales and managing dealers
2 – Dealers want an easy way to manage their inventory. Not every dealer will want to move to a “newer” system though.
3 – Customers want an expedited shopping experience. The faster they are able to obtain their purchase, the better.
Now to complicated part needed to occur. I needed to design a solution that would satisfy all painpoints in a simple and standardized workflow.
Low Fidelity
My developer and I sat down to discuss the site of the site on many occasions. Among many of our meetings, we came to the conclusion that we would use dynamic roles within the application. By using these roles, we could design a design framework and allow certain components or pages to be shown to users that had the correct permissions.
When designing the low fidelity mock ups, my developer and I sat side by side while using whiteboards and walked through most of the workflows we believed would occur within the application. Afterwards, I went into Balsamiq and creative basic wireframes that we could use as reference points. We knew we’d be coding and designing alongside each other for most of the project, so we didn’t bother creating too many low fidelities as we knew the design would change as we continued building out the components.
All in all, we had a specific strategy and we had a defined process that we both agreed to follow. There’s never only one way to approach a problem. Our way of building out this project showed me exactly that.
Initial wireframes of checkout process - Balsamiq
After several iterations of whiteboard designs, Balsamiq mockups, and component redesign, we were ready to begin building out the basic framework of the site.
High Fidelity
Pictures below:
Login Screen - Snap Antiques!
Account Creation
Reports Screen
Close Register
Conclusion
Snap Antiques has proven to be one of my most challenging design projects to this date. Not only was the design challenging, designing this product while maintaining a full time job has certainly had its moments. My three main takeaways working on this project are as follows:
- Design methodologies and frameworks are for guidance – it’s okay to work outside the box or try a different workflow.
- Focus on the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) - You'll never launch if you too perfect or specific about a design or workflow.
- Time management is key. Life will always throw something after another. It's important to plan ahead and focus on a deadline
Additional Case Studies
StudyWare
Bridging the gap between education and technology. StudyWare offers a creative solution to hard working students within the classroom. Designed during the 2016 SAP Demo Jam competition.
70 Shapes
One shape, two shape, three shape, four. Click and hold until it's the perfect size. Accidently miss the shape, start back at #1. Can you make it to 70 shapes? Soon to be available for iPad®, iPhone®, Windows Phone®, and Android®