Knox: Conversational, Actionable SMS

Helping businesses engage customers through personalized SMS communication

Role

Sole Creator (Design)

Industry

Communication / Messaging Solutions

Duration

2.5 hr design sprint

The Problem

Managing people, places, and objects is hard. It's complex due to a range of factors. Take the Iovine and Young Academy's Maker-space, for example. After talking with Jacob, our facility manager, and a few students, I've narrowed down the pain point for both parties.

Jacob:

Manually organizes and sorts data, which is time-consuming
Struggles with scattered reports across different platforms (emails, portal)
No real-time notifications for urgent issues, making it difficult to prioritize repairs
Lacks student feedback

Students:

Experience excessive logins, input fields, and complex navigations in the portal.
Miss important updates due to delayed or buried notifications (e.g., repair statuses or early closures)
Lack visibility into available resources or equipment in real time
Have limited support when it comes to quickly finding information on tools or facilities

But, no one wants another app (portal). People want simplicity.

The Solution

Knox offers a conversational, actionable SMS platform that simplifies operations by:

Centralizing communication within an SMS interface
Allowing direct, real-time interactions for scheduling, equipment, booking, and troubleshooting
Supporting automation for repetitive tasks (e.g., sending training forms, updating reservations, and providing equipment instructions)

This solution caters to businesses by enhancing their ability to communicate effectively without requiring apps.

The Problem

Jacob:

Manually organizes and sorts data, which is time-consuming
Struggles with scattered reports across different platforms (emails, portal)
No real-time notifications for urgent issues, making it difficult to prioritize repairs
Lacks student feedback

Students:

Experience excessive logins, input fields, and complex navigations in the portal.
Miss important updates due to delayed or buried notifications (e.g., repair statuses or early closures)
Lack visibility into available resources or equipment in real time
Have limited support when it comes to quickly finding information on tools or facilities

But, no one wants another app (portal). People want simplicity.

The Solution

Knox offers a conversational, actionable SMS platform that simplifies operations by:

Centralizing communication within an SMS interface
Allowing direct, real-time interactions for scheduling, equipment, booking, and troubleshooting
Supporting automation for repetitive tasks (e.g., sending training forms, updating reservations, and providing equipment instructions)

This solution caters to businesses by enhancing their ability to communicate effectively without requiring apps.

Process

Customer discovery: understanding the problem by analyzing existing pain points (e.g., manual data entry, excessive input fields, scattered communication)

Ideation: built with the simplest interface possible: SMS. It's the optimal solution for simplicity and real-time engagement.

Prototyping: creating a features list, developing workflows, and iterating

Features list:

Persona customization: Tailor personas with unique styles, tones, and instructions, including system behaviors like sarcasm or blunt responses, to match user needs.
Data personalization: Tools to create, manipulate, and display data-driven content like plotting tables or generating data visualizations.
Auto-generated content: Automated creation of messaging, updates, and drafts for various use cases, including SMS campaigns, promotions, and customer customization.

The Solution

Jacob's management dashboard is designed to elevate his SMS-based operational capabilities within the maker-space. The key feature built out below is the persona customization, which allows him to adapt communication tones, styles, and messaging instructions to suit various user groups and scenarios.