Team: Myself and two other designers, the founder, and a team of 3 engineers
Duration: Five months
My Role: Research, Design, QA Testing, Product Management
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Trello, Screen Hero
MODIFY INK IS NOT MAKING ANY MONEY
After eight months of Modify Ink going live, there were very few sales. We spent so much money developing the site and desperately needed some coming in.
During countless meetings and hours spent brainstorming, we came up with a new game plan to hopefully create instant revenue.
Modify Ink had a particular niche, and we hadn’t done our research beforehand to substantiate our idea. After some study, we found that digital downloads were a major category on Etsy - couldn’t we “easily” do digital downloads?
We found a deep interest in party printables after interviewing bloggers and influencers in the paper crafting community. A significant trend in the industry was DIY theme parties that were pretty elaborate. People wanted to coordinate everything from the invitation to the decorations to the food display.
As a scrapbooking company, we knew we could design party themes that would work great for this.
Party suites posed a unique challenge with the need to display all corresponding elements as a set
REINVENTING THE PRODUCT
Thus far, the purpose of Modify Ink was to customize art prints. That is pretty fundamental - one piece of art that you can color any way that works with your space and style. Party printable downloads have a new level of complexity because now you have many different art files that all need to coordinate. Customers also need to choose what individual piece types from the party suite they want to include in their purchase.
The site needed a lot more functionality. We had to re-invent the details page, the editor, and the finish and review page. For these pages to work for party suites, we needed to:
• Show all the different items that coordinating within the party suite
• Provide a way for the customer to pick and choose which items they selectively wanted within each party suite
• Give the option to apply changes made on one item to the rest of the suite automatically
• Add a type editor so people can customize elements such as invitations and banners
• Easily toggle between different items within the suite
• Chose between receiving a digital download the user can print themselves or have us print and ship a physical product
From the time we pulled the trigger on the party, it took five months to ship. We were still working through bugs on the existing product but focused most of our time on this pivot. We went through several editor and check-out process variations before we settled on the best user flow.
MY ROLE
Throughout the creation of Modify Ink, I wore every hat possible, from QA tester to product manager. My title was product development manager. I led the team of designers and worked directly with the founder and the developers. We had almost daily meetings to discuss functions and iterations. I tested relentlessly, looking for pain points or bugs which I communicated to the developers through Trello, Slack, and Screen Hero. I participated in design reviews, planned the schedule, and took part in developing any new features. Since we were a very lean team creating a startup company, my role involved any task that needed filling to ensure we met deadlines and accomplished our goals.
My main focus throughout was usability.
• Does the detail page communicate the different party templates that coordinate?
• Do our customers understand navigating through different screens in the editor?
• Is adding specific items within the party suite to the cart easy?
• Is the checkout process simple and logical?
OUTCOMES AND LESSONS LEARNED
A GOOD IDEA CAN ONLY GO SO FAR
Party printables were a great concept but did not lead to the instant revenue we needed. In the end, the company did not make it.
Our exciting idea just wasn’t enough to overcome a lack of knowledge about our consumers and a lack of exposure to the product. Even when we decided to pivot to party, we did not do adequate research and user testing before starting.
We interviewed industry figures on the party downloads concept and had great excitement over the plan. It was also a definite hit at the trade shows where we demoed it. However, we still failed to question the actual users - those at home purchasing downloads from Etsy and customizing invitations from Minted. We could not get buy-in from the consumer, and, in the end, I believe that was our greatest downfall.
A SIMPLER PRODUCT MIGHT HAVE LED TO SUCCESS
I wish we had started smaller with our art editor and got the product out to more customers before we tried to branch out into other areas such as party printables. If we got feedback and traction on that first, we might not have spent all the time and money on new features - features that might not have been important in the end. I’m sure we would have ended up with a different product overall, but it might have had more success.
I am sad that Modify Ink did not become the phenomenon we dreamed of. I do not regret my time and energy because I learned so much. Those two years taught me valuable knowledge I will use in my future career.