Recognizing a gap in the market for an easy-to-use yet powerful design tool, we decided to create Pixelied from the ground up. Our goal was to empower individuals and small businesses with a user-friendly platform that enables professional-quality graphic design without the complexity of learning traditional software. We aimed to develop an intuitive interface packed with essential features to streamline the design process for users of all experience levels.
Role:
Design & Development
Industry:
SaaS, Design tools
Duration:
16 Weeks
Research & Exploration
We began by conducting comprehensive research, interviews, and surveys to understand the needs and challenges of our target audience. This involved:
User Personas: Doing one-on-one meetings with our users to understand the pain points of potential users in order to tailor the editor's features accordingly.
Market Analysis: Studying existing design tools to identify gaps and opportunities for innovation.
Technical Feasibility: Exploring the best technologies to build a scalable editor from scratch.
Our research highlighted the importance of simplicity without sacrificing functionality. Our users are non-designers which means creating a design tool with the least technical know-how. Users desired a tool that was easy to navigate but also offered a wide range of features for creative flexibility.
Design
Discovery
During the discovery phase, the focus was on identifying the feature requirements, design challenges and creating a user-centric editor for new or experienced designers.
Key features such as a drag-and-drop interface, template gallery, text editing, images and its editing tools, background remover, image filters & effects, color blend, mockups, text-to-image AI, file upload and storage were prioritized to be worked on.
The timeline for this phase was around 1 week, with the aim to deliver some rough low-fidelity mockups to understand the UI requirements and to have a good starting point for high-fidelity designs.
Components
Leveraging Figma’s component system, we designed a separate design system for Pixelied editor containing all the molecular level UI elements such as buttons, inputs, cards, toolbars, icons, and much more. This ensured consistency across the interface and allowed easy and rapid iterations.
High-fidelity designs
The Pixelied Editor's UI design was all about being user-friendly, accessible yet highly functional. It aimed to have an easy-to-reach toolbar, a neat artboard, and simple controls for easy navigation.
It was designed to help users from selecting and customizing templates to finalizing and exporting their designs smoothly and quickly without compromising the quality.
Delivery
To facilitate hand-off, self-explanatory flows were created for each feature, with important notes and annotations to ensure quick understanding of the flows simply by reviewing the design file.
Development/Implementation
Our development team built the Pixelied design tool from scratch, focusing on creating a fast and scalable application. Key aspects of the implementation included:
Technology Stack: We chose modern web technologies like React and Node.js to build a responsive and interactive user interface.
Feature Development: Implemented all prioritized features, ensuring they worked seamlessly together.
Performance Optimization: Ensured quick load times and smooth interactions, even with complex designs.
Quality Assurance: Conducted extensive testing to identify and fix any issues before launch.
Close collaboration between the design and development teams ensured that the final product stayed true to the original vision.
Outcomes
The newly developed Pixelied Editor was launched successfully and received positive feedback from users. Key outcomes included:
High User Adoption: Till date the platform has gotten more than 2 million registered users.
Positive Reviews: One of the most recurring themes in user feedback was how fast the editor is and its user friendliness. It has a 4.5+ rating across platforms like G2 and Capterra.
Increased Engagement: Users spent more time on the platform, utilizing multiple features.
Market Differentiation: Positioned Pixelied as a competitive player in the online design tool market. It has been featured as one of the top 10 design tools for non-designers across multiple reputable publications.
The project is still active and maintained for over 4 years now. It is still growing fast with new features and objectives.
