BKON Product Launch

UX & UI Design, Copywriting, Product & Package Design, Photography, and Illustration

Audience

Developers and curious marketing techies who want to engage with their loyal customers.

Objective

Inform about the potential Bluetooth Low Energy technology and entice them to experiment with BKON hardware.

What's a Beacon?

The concept is pretty simple. Bluetooth Low Energy iBeacons emit signals that apps on smartphones can detect. If an app senses a particular signal from a beacon "tuned" to that app, then the app can perform an action. Whether that action was a notification to the user or a simple measure of traffic, iBeacons can give both users and app administrators incredible value.

BKON Beacon D1
BKON Beacons

When Apple's "iBeacon" protocol first came to market, the only real hint that the tech existed was on a slide at the World Wide Developer's conference. Aside from that, Apple didn't say too much about it. So it was left to the manufacturers to promote the new beacon technology.

“Kevin Beacon” was one of the first name ideas. We actually had a wall full of potential names, but the one we kept coming back to was BKON. Once we had the name, the logo, and the product design went hand-in-hand.

BKON Logo
BKON Beacon A1

We noticed that developers always wanted to hold the beacon when they were developing. They were always surprised that it was as small as it is (the size of two AA batteries.) For that reason, it needed to "fit" and feel good in someone's hand. The inspiration for earlier versions was a small river stone, the kind someone would use when . Although we didn't get to keep all of the smooth curves, we did keep the important ones.

BKON Colors

The color palette I designed needed to be used in everything from web reports to product packaging.

Beacons & Beer Pitch

They say, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” With that in mind, I organized a community meet-up to get local innovators energized about all of the opportunities with this new technology. More than a sales pitch for the BKON brand, it was a pitch for IoT tech and where beacons fit. Getting innovative technophiles jazzed about possibilities was the intent. The beer part… well, that ensured we got a good turnout. 

I wrote and designed this pitch to play silently on a 15-foot wide projected screen while everyone chatted. (It ran a little slower than this during the event.)

The Website

The website had three functions. 1). It needed to inform. 2). It needed to allow someone to buy beacons and Registry SaaS access. 3). It needed to allow someone to administer their Registry account and view metrics reports. Starting with rough sketches, moving to wireframes, I handed over high fidelity comps to the developers to implement.

BKON Website

BKON Website Comng

Coming Soon Page

This simple form allowed the team to take requests for information while the product was still in production.

BKON Registry

The Registry Details

Lots of text, but no images. That's because it was still in production at the time. Still, it needed to be easy to read and "scannable" by those in a hurry.

BKON Website Product

The Product

The BKON A1 was the flagship product.

BKON Website Ecommerce

Ecommerce

It needed to be possible for people to buy a single beacon or thousands at a time with coupon discounts. They also needed to be able to buy access to the Registry.

BKON Website Shipping

Shipping & Payment

Originally built with a Foxycart back end, we later switched to Stripe. My job was to make the interface clean, easy to follow, and quick to get through.

BKON Website Account

Account Info

Once registered, all beacons needed to show battery state, refresh rate, and power level on the main page.

Other administrative information and organizational tools needed to be accessed easily.

BKON Website Dashboard

Metrics Dashboard

At the end of the day, people are interested in performance.