Mixing the brand mojo « handcraft for luxury » in an app for shop’s sellers.
The case
Hermes handle shortage and it is normal for handcraft but with an international luxury brand reserves are moving quickly. Hermes shops are maybe the only one where sellers build a close relation with their clients along time. In order to help them in this mission but also finding the right article through the world offers and save some goods for their clients. The sales assistant needed to bring all their tools together. Carry on the top, let’s avoid any queue.
Needless to say that here we don’t fit in any guideline, it was handcraft app !
Standing in the shop it need to feet the pocket (to use hand moving goods) but also to be shown to clients : iPad mini was the target choice (back in 2014). Also the seller need to switch between customer and product univers instantly from anyone and with a natural gesture. More than that each seller could check his univers of service containing his own stats and productivity tools…
As a suppliant of Hermes I could not see directly sellers so for every cycle of design our customer side project manager go and get the feedback we needed. Then when we felt confident about it the development has started and design kept going deep inside details.
After a close work with clients I was demanded on another project so I ended it with details use cases videos of the trajectory and leave it in the hand of my (friends) client with detailed explanations. The project reach his goal but hardly. Unfortunately we decrease the gestures level for economic reasons.
The project has been sold on a low price in order to make reference for Sopra new product : Movalys framework for mobility. Has it was a fresh framework the interactions implementation happened to be too hard for the tech’ team. The strong point of the framework was his capacity to connect existing infrastructure but UI happen to be much harder than expected. I was lacking of experience about this framework. They low the gestures and animations in order to reduce the cost of apps. So even if we get a technical validation I underestimate our production capacity. My fault was in the beginning not making real build as proof of concept. Also I underestimate the time due to organisations for feedbacks. I should have work for more.
I am still proud of my work on Hermes because I discover a strong brand with a singular view on their product and it push me to imagine new interactions and navigations.
