Designing an ecosystem of products for Softcom Limited
Scope
Create a cohesive set of product icons for Softcom’s new products.
Tools
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Figma.
My role
Brand Strategy, Brand Identity Design, Iconography.
Status
Live
Background
Softcom is an innovation company that exists to provide solutions to three major human challenges: exclusion, fragmentation, and stagnation.
For over 14 years, we have experimented and innovated on providing answers to the question, “What helps people grow?”. Our experience in providing these answers for individuals and businesses across various sectors has led us to create products focused on improving how people bank, know more and exchange value.
Challenge
In many cases, tools and products are fragmented and the user needs to continually hop from one platform to another to perform certain tasks. The problems of interconnection and harmonization of the experiences of the user across platforms are important to solve, but the journey in itself begins with designing a set of product icons that have the same DNA and character.
As Softcom transitions from a service company to a product company, it was important to help create a coherent and cohesive product ecosystem through strategy and design. These products (Eyowo, Kwiksell, Useforms, etc.) should be distinct enough to stand and be marketed on their own, but also cohesive within the same ecosystem.
Design Process
Understand Phase
We had to ask ourselves and key stakeholders a few questions to better understand the challenge, outline goals and define what success means for us. I gathered insights from the product teams to better understand the key value propositions of the individual products, points of parity and difference. It was clear that these products were interconnected and related in very unique ways – these products were in fact, siblings. I began to see the product ecosystem as a family, which informed how we approached the design and expression of the icons.
We took a few cues and learnings from brands like Mozilla, Google Workspace, and Zoho.
Exploration/Ideation phase
This phase was filled with a lot of experimentation, iteration, sketches, and paper tossing. Eventually we had a light bulb moment and decided to take what was right there all along and establish it as a design language for the icons – the two dots of the parent brand.
Designing the icons
Maintaining a 24px by 24px grid and paying attention to minimalism, versatility, and cohesion as guidelines, I designed the icons for the products.
Validation
We validated the designs by testing with users and stakeholders, we also applied the designs in several use cases to determine versatility.
