Used by thousands of photography studios, ShootQ had been losing market share to new competition. The new CEO approached us to design the next-generation of the product experience from the ground up—to breath new life into the company and the industry. We designed a web and native mobile product experience that helped inexperienced (but talented) photographers worry less about running their businesses and more on their craft.
Prior to reimagining the product experience, we worked closely with ShootQ's new CEO to strategically position the ShootQ brand for the long-term future. Speaking to the younger, up-and-coming photographer as our target segment, we designed smooth gradients, geometric font choices, minimalistic buttons and icons that translates to today's modern software experience. We rebranded the entire company to communicate the values of a modern, forward-thinking experience for the next-generation of photographers.
There's no sugar-coating it: the existing proposal builder was slow, confusing and inefficient. This was by far the most frustrating part of the ShootQ experience, especially because it was the most important part of their business. We cut out over 10 different steps and created a wizard with saved templates and presets to save the user time. Power users can set up all of their templates ahead of time to automate the task list for every kind of shoot.
Sometimes photographers were booked for jobs as far as 12 months in advanced and almost all photography studios had long check-lists of tasks to be completed in between their booking and the job itself. To reduce the cognitive load for studios balancing 10-15 jobs at once, we designed a feature that not only tracked the step-by-step process for each booking, but automated some tasks such as emailing and scheduling.
We identified other tools used by ShootQ users, despite the fact that the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality was already available in the legacy system. Users preferred the simplicity of apps like Trello and Asana, even though they were not meant for CRM use. Adopting the popular kanban format, we designed an automated lead capturing system organized using terminology for sales stages that were popular amongst photographers.
Rather than extend every feature to the mobile experience, to maintain simplicity, we designed only for what photographers needed the most on-the-go; nothing more, nothing less. Our research revealed an important insight about context: despite detailed preparation, photographers were still very anxious and stressed on the day of a shoot. We oriented the mobile experience around the only information a photographer needed onsite: view and manage their upcoming tasks, shoot location and schedule, and communication with clients to ensure he or she is providing the best customer service.
The refresh helped non-business-savvy photographers manage their customer relationships, keep track of their to-dos and send invoices better. The result was a resurgence of new user signups that reinvigorated the decade-old platform.