Client: Laudspeaker
This is a project for a tech start up called Laudspeaker. Their product is a customer Journey Builder. In simpler terms, a customer journey builder is a way to automate how you communicate with your users.
Challenge:
“Animate our Journey Building software as a GIF we can easily put on our website and Product Hunt page. Show how simple it is to use. Make it bold, eye-catching and clear”.
The Goal
Laudspeaker approached me to ask if I could animate a GIF their process of creating a journey. A journey is their core service. They were about to launch on Product Hunt and they needed something to draw attention.
For those who don’t know, Product Hunt is a website where start ups launch their software products. It works in some way like a leaderboard. The most popular ideas will rise to the top. And anything you can do to bolster your page will only do you good.
They ended up getting to No #2 and managed to attract a couple hundred sign ups. On Product Hunt, that’s a pretty good turnout! Especially considering that product launches happen every single day there!
The Process
Research Product
Gather Assets
Map it all out
Animate
Deliver
Ok! Let’s get it done!
Research Product
Here is a journey being built in the Laudspeaker web app. This first hand experience of using the app helped me to understand how to visualise it. To be entirely honest with you, I didn’t actually know what this app actually did until I used it. So this step was absolutely essential.
2. Gather Assets
Once I figured out how the software works (and what it actually does!), I accessed their Figma files. What I was looking for was their design standards. Brands usually have a specific font and colour scheme that they use - this was no different. Anything that I couldn’t download - like small icons and such, I recreated them in illustrator.
3. Map it all out
Now that I have the basic information, I needto map out what my animation is going to look like. I’ll be animating a flowchart, so I’ll need to actually design a flowchart first.
This ugly diagram is exactly that. I made this little skeleton in Illustrator and now that I know where the bones and joints go, I can just add the muscles, tendons and skin until I have a little guy.
In short, each red square is a step and each line represents a trigger. (The words in bold are features of the software!)
Here is a pack of icons I found for mouse icons. Since I’m animating a user interface, I need mouse icons! I used expressions in After Effects to change the Mouse icon at different points!
It doesn’t seem like much but it makes a big difference!
One core feature of this software is the ability to send Emails when customers interact with your software (i.e. “Send Password Reset Email”). Here’s a little animation of an envelope flying off screen. Maybe this won’t make sense to you - but if you know After Effects it will!
4. Animate
Ok, so here’s what my plan was. I have that weird looking flow chart right? I’m going to animate it as one long weird rectangle. Then I’m going to drop in a camera that moves down the flowchart, “filming” the action. Think about it like those long uninterrupted shots you see in a film - like the restaurant scene in Goodfellas (don’t hate me if I haven’t seen it. I know that one scene! It’s a film about the frozen pizza right?). Ok ENOUGH MESSIN AROUND! Here’s the Before and After pictures so you get the gist.
Can you see how the image on the left is the blue print for the image on the right? They look slightly similar and quite different. I wanted the video to start with a mouse clicking the “Create Journey” button - which matches the software interaction. Then we follow the Journey to the end.
The output of this video will be a square. So we need to remember that only a fragment of this entire map will be visible at any one time. The “camera” will be moving from the top to the bottom. If you need a refresher of what it looks like - just check below!
5. Deliver
This is one of five different GIFs I sent. I sent them in different colour choices. Now that I’m looking at the project files again, I’m glad they chose this one. The others were a bit too garish. You’ll also notice that the orange highlights were removed - I felt like they didn’t add anything to the overall piece. They weren’t too legible and were quite distracting in an already dynamic piece.
Why not check out the more in-depth explainer/tutorial I did for Laudspeaker next?