Happy selling.

A mobile point-of-sale system.

I co-founded Instore right out of college and started my first large scale project. Running a startup and learning interface and branding design was a rewarding experience.

About

Verdi began Instore as “Joe,” when I joined as co-founder. We later renamed it to Own and then finally Instore. It was the first company I worked at after school, and perhaps forms the start of my design career.

Instore is a point of sale system that runs on an iPad and on the cloud. Back when we first started, iPads did not exist. We built our hardware from scratch. Imagine that, building hardware in 2009. The work needed to source components, touch screens, and manufacturers with no venture capital was difficult at best.

I worked in software mostly, though. This is where I cut my teeth in user interface and experience design. When I was up at five in the morning working the morning coffee rush at a customer location, I learned the important of a good, efficient interface first hand. When the line is long and a customer keeps changing an order, concepts like “cognitive load” and “affordance” hit close to home.

I left Instore when the opportunity of Twice presented itself. It was a difficult decisions to leave a company you started, but there is also a skill in recognizing when the time has passed for an opportunity, and when a new moment presents itself.

Product design

User Interface and Experience

From Web to iOS

Instore began before the iPad even existed in a world of skeuomorphic design. As the company ages, so too did the design world change, and the product underwent many redesigns. In each case though, redesigns integrated new testing and usability work done in-person, on-site, and over the phone, so that the product maintained its mission to make running a business simpler.

Logo

Identity

Upward

The original logo for Joe and Own was an upward pointing arrow. We integrated the arrow into the physical hardware design (we used to build our own hardware before the iPad). The final branding and name of Instore took the arrow logo and updated it for a more open and connected look.

Marketing

The Consumer touch for Business to Business

Marketing and Website

Even though we sold to businesses, we wanted the feeling of a high-quality consumer brand within our marketing material. After all, every business owner is a consumer. On our website, we would feature real photography of businesses owners and their stores: avoiding stock photography wherever possible.

Project summary

Project
Product design and creative direction
Client
Role
Co-founder
Scope
Logo, branding, renderings, product design, user interface, user experience, website design, video, photography, web development, iOS design, App Store marketing
Term
August 2009 – January 2014