For me, product strategy, branding, and design are strongly linked:
- Good design is a good strategy for any product.
- Good design is also critical to a product’s brand.
- Any strategy must include plans for making a product easy to access and use for its target audience.
However, in daily practice, things like usability, accessibility, and brand strategy end up in the product backlog, forever adding to technical debt. By focusing on adding more features instead of making what they already have easier to use, many products eventually enter a product death spiral, condemned to permanent enshittfication.
The later good design enters the product cycle, the more expensive it is to implement. Having good design at the outset minimizes the investment expense while maximizing the investment payoff. As a designer for many years, I know that good design is paramount to success. While working on my future RemoteReno Assistant product, I’m investing in branding.
I have been putting myself into my future customer’s shoes and thinking about how to make their struggles easier. While having a design background helps, it is not required.
Studying Competitors
I started my process by looking at some competitors to see how they look and what they emphasize.
Two notable finds are Angi and Thumbtack. Both of these are more adjacent companies than competitors, but they are trying to solve the problem of matching customers for home improvement jobs with professionals. I know that finding professionals who are licensed, bonded, insured, and will show up to your job site on time is a huge pain point for anyone looking to have home improvement work done. On both sites, I noticed a LOT of white space and minimal decision-making on their home pages. Both are trying to project a sense of calm in a space that is often chaotic. I am trying to do the same with my product. Everything needs to be well organized so that it encourages calm.
Applying Object-Oriented UX (OOUX) Principles
Moreover, I am using OOUX principles in that every object in my system has a distinct look and feel so as not to create confusion. In my system, for example, JOBS and ESTIMATES, while related, are and look different. A JOB includes information such as due dates and products that are being used. Each JOB can have one or more ESTIMATES, which include information such as pricing and an accepted/not accepted status.
Getting Inspiration from the Fun Part
To create a color palette for my product, I sampled green and gold colors from an image I found on Unsplash after searching for marble patterns. For me, looking at things like marble patterns and paint colors is the fun part of home improvement projects, and that gave me inspiration. Since my MVP is a Notion template, my use of color for now is limited to images. I want to use images in a way that promotes calm and organization, which ultimately builds the confidence that I have found necessary to get home improvement projects completed.
So if you are not a professional designer, here are some branding takeaways that anyone can use:
- Look at your competitors for ideas and inspiration
- Applying OOUX principles at the outset of your product process prevents user confusion and tech debt after launch
- Think about what the most enjoyable part of your user’s workflow is, and dive into inspiration from there
If you want to find out more about how to incorporate design, OOUX, and usability into your project, let me know, and let’s start a conversation.
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