A short (Jaspr) product story
The energy within the humble Kreuzberg offices of Jaspr HQ reached a fever pitch over the past few days, as the team put v1.0 of the app through its paces, preparing for its release into the wild. The time for trade is almost upon us!
For a small team like ours, this process is possibly (and genuinely) the most exciting thing that has happened all year. It is the culmination of months of discussion, planning, debating, sketching, coding, honing, crafting, tweaking and moulding. Phew!
On December 4th, we are beyond excited to bring Jaspr’s private beta to the waiting iOS devices of Berlin. But before we get there, let’s take a quick look at the path our product has taken to get where it is today. We might also have time to share a cheeky first look at our new product (shhh)…
As you may have read in Noel’s earlier post, our journey as a team started two years ago with Towsh — our first trading app experiment which we put together in our spare time.
As you might be able to see from the screenshots above, Towsh was a heavily item-focused product. Its primary aim was to propose users trades and trade items that matched with what they had said they wanted or were offering. Its centrepiece was a Tinder-style card swipe interaction that allowed users to browse proposed trades quickly by swiping right (“let’s trade”) or left (“no thanks”).
This product strategy put Jasprs USP — its matching algorithm — front and centre, helping people to quickly find trades that made sense.
In the three and a half months that it was live, around 1,000 people signed up and we saw some truly inspiring trade items shared (from private piano concerts, to pasta making lessons), and heard many stories about how trade made peoples lives better.
Towsh was a great first step, but its limited technical foundation and UX meant that it would always have a short lifespan.
Having learnt what we could from it, we decided to let go of Towsh, step back and regroup. This regrouping - or “reboot” as we like to call it - kicked off over a long weekend in Feldberger Seelandschaft in rural Germany and continued on in Berlin for weeks. Using data gleaned from Towsh, along with feedback gathered from interviews with our beloved users, we were able to re-conceptualise our vision of trade.
In the 8 months since the reboot, we’ve not only had key stops in Potsdam and Switzerland, but also further refined our understanding of our user base and identified our key market segment (inviting her over for dinner and drinks on multiple occasions).
Building on these crucial findings, we were able to build a brand — complete with visual language & tone of voice, detailed product flows and early prototypes exploring motion language.
We’d like to properly dive into these areas in future articles, but for now (to hold you over until the private beta release on Sunday) let’s very briefly check where Jaspr‘s at.
A glimpse into Jasprs product design
Our Logo communicates strength in community. It shows two elements pulling together to make a stronger whole. Elements of movement and tension are conveyed.
Our Brand Colour is bold, vivid, but also calm and reassuring. It is inspired by the beautiful colour of Lake Maligne, near Jasper in Canada.
Jasprs Product Design is simple and clean, but with character. Bold colours and iconography help to offset otherwise minimalist design choices.
Personalisation is important, as it helps our users to communicate what is important to them quickly and easily within the community.
Product Language is key when creating a community driven product, and is a component that will evolve over time. For now, Jaspr has wit, but is also relaxed and conversational. Most importantly, it encourages its users to be communicative with each other.
Iconography plays a big role in establishing Jasprs personality, and conveys a certain level of fun and humanity. The crucial element of these icons is movement — indicating that nothing that we own is static.
So that’s it. Sneak peek done and dusted. Quick huh? In a few days, you will have the chance to try Jaspr our for yourself! Before signing off though, I’d like to leave on one thought:
From a product perspective, the most important realisation that we’ve had since our reboot is that community must be at the centre of everything we do. Like so many apps and products that have gone before us, having a good digital presence is only half of the battle. Attracting and energising a community with shared values is the real challenge. As Noel put it:
“Jaspr isn’t a tech startup; it’s a barter company.”
Having robust tech, nice UIs and well planned UX is all well and good, but at the end of the day the only thing that will count is if people are actually trading — and for the majority of our users that means getting off the couch, leaving the house and meeting up with someone they met in an app. Attracting the right people, and building the right community can smooth over most doubts, and is all that counts in the long run.
There are many features that we can’t wait to build into into Jaspr, but the parts we are most excited about pertain to communities.
Allowing users to easily find and trade with likeminded people who they would actually want to spend time with outside of the app is a big topic that we’re really looking forward to tackling.
And this is where you come in — even if you are reading this after December 4th, 2016 — if you are interested in Jaspr (or trade in general), please don’t hesitate to download Jaspr and give it a shot! Or, you can head over to our website to learn more about Jaspr.
Hope to trade with you soon :)
