Category: News

At Springshot, we combine complicated programming, technology, and data into a thoughtfully-designed platform that is accessible, fun, and easy to use.

We have always felt that our app must look great — and feel authentic — in order to encourage worker interaction. We know we are the worker’s voice out in the field, we embrace it, and we center our designs around this fact. On our backend, though, there are competing components that we must reconcile: design that connects within numerous industries, makes sense in various languages and countries, and accounts for all the different types of people who use Springshot. 

We have purposely designed Springshot with all of this humanity in mind. 

To provide more detail behind our aesthetic decisions, we recently sat down with Creative Director Josephine Courant, who has worked at Springshot for over seven years managing our brand’s story across mobile, desktop products, our website, and social marketing. Courant shares the backstory on Springshot’s creative processes and why we have chosen to focus on the principles of Human-Centered Design.

Q: Why is design important?

When design is done thoughtfully, users feel it. Good design makes users feel calm, competent, happy, or even sad, if that is the desired intent. We care deeply about design and how our platform looks and interacts. Yes, people have to use our Springshot app for work; it’s not a game, it’s a utility to get important work done on time. And we want it to feel a little fun, too. But Springshot, with its features like our astronaut avatar SIM (Springshot In Motion) flying in and giving high-fives after a mission is finished, really conjures the emotional responses to the design, whether that’s conscious for a user or not. The goal is to bring up emotions like, “Yes, I did it!” Or, “That’s really cute. That’s kind of fun.” 

So it’s sometimes hard to explain, but we embrace a philosophy called Human-Centered Design because this path helps users feel an emotional connection to our product. This is especially noteworthy when it’s a work platform that users are required to interact with each day. 

Q: What exactly is Human-Centered Design, and why does this methodology work for Springshot?

Human-Centered Design is the real laser focus on the end user. It uses a combination of research on how users use the technology, empathy, design-thinking and an agile mindset and an ability to pivot quickly to changing circumstances. We take the complexity of the backend of the Springshot platform and design a user interface that is intuitive, easy, and fun to use.

There are four stages of Human-Centered Design and Marketing, originally created by the global design firm IDEO, that we keep core to mind always: 

1) Walk in customers’ shoes. 

2) Listen with empathy and authenticity.

3) Make a human impact in a busy and complicated digital world.

4) Grow together with customers, employees and stakeholders — collaboration is key. We constantly engage with our customers to make improvements for their specific needs.

Most of our users work in strenuous, often monotonous jobs, and with that in mind, we want the design of Springshot to inform, engage, and encourage at all times. We also know that first impressions count. To that end, every piece of our Springshot platform has the same design, from the app, the website, and social media to our auditing platform, Springshot Forms, or our white papers and case studies, anything shown to a client or potential client. 

Q: What are some specific Human-Centered Design elements that set Springshot apart?

There are several areas we’ve focused on over the last 10 years to make our platform thoughtful and customized. We make sure to have the call to action on each screen that is very specific and very obvious. There has to be a clickable area of a button that is just easy — it has to imply click here without saying “click here”. We have to take into account whether our users are using our application outside or indoors, in different weather conditions. Our app can be used in many different languages to accommodate users for whom English is not their first language.

When it comes to the fonts we use, we purposely test different sizes and configurations. Take the baggage handlers, for example: The gate and the location fonts have to be much bigger because these workers are constantly on the go and need to check gate numbers quickly and efficiently. Then, when thinking about Springshot Forms, how each client uses each form, there’s a slightly different variation that they need based on different scenarios. Each answer spurs another question. We think of — and design for — all of this throughout our iterative process, working alongside our VP Product, Roshan Patel. 

Once the app’s design is ready, the client may then come back with two or three small changes. In one instance, for baggage car handlers, we found they needed a different grid with bigger font and to get rid of some information that didn’t apply to others. Or maybe we’ll need to add this bit of text, or we need to add a location, or we need to know what kind of bag it is. There will be small nuances that we will work with the team to incorporate into the design. 

Q: Why do you spend so much time on the design of each icon, for example?

It would be very easy to say let’s not have icons, but icons are a universal language. You don’t have to translate icons. We have spent hours behind the scenes figuring out every single mission, every job in Springshot; we’ve spent an hour talking about a single icon alone. There are hundreds of missions and all have an icon — baggage pickup, food prep, an unaccompanied minor, a bathroom. Each one of those missions needs to have an icon that represents what that job is so we can better communicate with our workers and they can communicate amongst themselves. Our designer Caleb Heisey also created an amazing library of avatars for users to choose from. While the icons are more functional and practical, our custom avatars are fun, engaging and vibrant and adds a definite whimsical personality to the design.

Q: Can you talk about the purposeful color choices made for Springshot?

The app used to be very monochromatic. It was black and blue, sort of like a corporate palate. Now a main call to action is the color tangerine. And we have a primary and a secondary palate. The primary is the blues and the grays and the tangerine/orange. But even with that gradient, it’s very thoughtfully done. There’s a primary blue and then a default, an active state and then an inactive state. So you’ve got the structural formal colors that are more practical. A secondary palate is what we use for iconography. We’ll have a fun purple and a green, and those are to liven up the app and make it have more personality. 

Within the app, we also have a mix of line icons for the navigation and then job icons are more filled in and solid. That design is constantly evolving, too. Right now, it’s a much cleaner, minimalistic view. It’s more white space. It’s a clean and concise design. There are secondary bits of information that are hidden, but you can always access it. So there’s a much better hierarchy of information on the screen.

Q: Do you have a focus on making the Springshot app friendly from an accessibility standpoint?

Yes, I want to take that human design sensibility and really focus on the accessibility factor of the workers, and this is also important because people learn in different ways. There are people who are colorblind so via the contrast in coloring, we can create a dark and a white skin, or if you’re outside at nighttime, should it be reversed? In the future, we could be incorporating audio as one messaging option; instead of chats, there are audio files for people to make. 

We’re also thinking about sounds and tactile vibrations. If someone doesn’t have their sound on it, what’s the vibration? And there are a lot of different vibrations. This also comes into play with the notifications and which sounds we use. We’ve gone through a lot of different versions.

Q: What are some design components you’re thinking about for future iterations of Springshot?

Definitely incorporating accessibility into our design, as I mentioned. Also, something we’re thinking about is synching to smart watches. You’d start a mission or the mission comes to your watch and you just press “go”. But the design on the web app has to be really focused on this, too, and it’s very complicated, affecting different platforms and people.

As the team grows, we are really eager to start implementing gamification into our app in order to incorporate designs like badges, interactions, encouragement, messages, and trophies, so that the whole company can see teams succeed. 

In early 2021, Springshot partnered with marketing firm KedzieT Consulting to launch a strategic and distinct presence on the LinkedIn business networking platform. What followed was an effective year where we solidified ourselves as a thought leader in the aviation and mobile communications industries. We’ve told many of our favorite stories in our own words, and we’re happy to say that LinkedIn was the perfect match to set our social media presence in motion.

Following these successes, the natural evolution of our content push is a move into Instagram. Through this platform that boasts roughly 1 billion active users, we will showcase more of the humanity and lightheartedness of our brand and our workers. 

To provide background on our social media strategies, we turned to Springshot’s Creative Director, Josephine Courant, and Kedzie Teller, founder and lead consultant of KedzieT Consulting, to reflect on our past approach and share more about our future Instagram launch.

Q: Can you take us through the thinking behind Springshot’s first social media presence on LinkedIn?

Courant: As chance would have it, we pushed our Springshot brand live in early 2020 right when the whole world shut down because of COVID-19, literally the week before the pandemic began. So in early 2021, this was our opportunity to re-introduce ourselves — starting with LinkedIn.

Teller: We wanted to lean into making Springshot a thought leader in the B2B space, and there’s no platform better for that than LinkedIn. I knew our target audience would gravitate to content that showcased Springshot’s expertise in this sector, and it sounded like a really fun challenge for me. I brought in Communications Strategist Jordan Rowe immediately because I know she is a fabulous storyteller. One of the things that Springshot CEO Doug Kreuzkamp and Josephine both emphasized immediately is that Springshot has a very unique story.

Q: What is the strategy behind the LinkedIn content?

Teller: I believe in the power of brand stories. So, the launch was about storytelling, not about sales. That’s why we structured out the year with quarterly themes that allowed us to share unique, substantive narratives. Springshot had never talked about themselves before in any way, other than through their website. The sky was the limit in terms of the types of things we could talk about. 

Courant: The beauty of working with themes, especially when you’re just starting up, is we got to understand what resonated with our audience and made them engage. Because this is a brand new endeavor, we didn’t know. We didn’t know if product content was going to be the biggest story or if industry work was the biggest story.

Teller: So we started with what types of industries we serve so that our audience got an understanding of what we do. Then, we moved into talking about the customer experience as well as the individual user’s experience when they are interacting with the platform on their mobile phones. In the third quarter we moved into product, which is where we got more detailed into how we developed and evolved the product, including the people behind its engineering and design. The fourth quarter has been about our partnerships, and we are presenting an end-of-year review, all the great things that we accomplished in 2021.

Q: What are some highlights from the first year?

Teller: The most powerful thing that we did this year was launch the Always Essential campaign which highlights the essential workers who have been using Springshot day in and day out to keep life moving during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was not only the most fun work for us to do — and the most emotionally charged work for us to do — but it was our highest engaged content of the year.

People want to hear these human stories. It’s a unique space for Springshot because we enable so many people in a mobile workforce that has now become more common. Remote workers are a mainstay of our world these days, and Springshot has a distinct role in that, supporting the ever-growing need for mobile efficiency. 

Q: Have there been any silver linings from launching an initial social media presence during a pandemic?

Courant: There have been silver linings in two areas. One is that the work we’re focused on has come to the national forefront of everyone’s mind. The whole concept of an essential worker has been there for eternity, but has never been given the limelight. The way Springshot positioned it, that these workers are essential, it just really clicked. It was a puzzle piece that was just a perfect fit. So I don’t know if we would have reached that whole theme had we not gone through this pandemic.

Secondly, especially with aviation being our primary industry that completely shut down due to the pandemic, as the world starts to re-open, a lot of people aren’t going back, a lot of people are resigning. So they are really now looking to Springshot and to Doug to help them restructure their workforces, make them more efficient, make sure that the people who are coming to work are happy and are going to want to stay for a long time.

Q: Moving into Instagram, why does it feel right to launch on that social platform now?

Teller: When we set up our content strategy for LinkedIn, we established four content pillars to help guide content creation and identify what subjects resonated best with our audience. Now, one of our pillars, culture, is something that always performs well on LinkedIn. But because LinkedIn is a more professional environment, you can’t always be as visual, fun and lighthearted as we think the Springshot brand really is. Springshot has this whimsicalness to it and approachability that I haven’t seen elsewhere in the tech industry. 

Instagram is a place where you can really use that to your advantage and carve out your own niche. It is the place where we can expand on our creativity. It’s bringing these stories that we’ve seen succeed in a very static world on LinkedIn into a much more dynamic one on Instagram. We’ll use video and audio in a way that will be more fluid, interactive and personable. The stories that we’re telling are really of those people working on the ground, and we need to meet them where they are. 

Courant: Going back to the Always Essential campaign, which, again, is really core to who the company is, those stories will be much better told on Instagram, graphically and with sound. Instagram is just a natural evolution of Always Essential, to bring these people to life with the flexibility to do so in creative ways. I also think more of our Springshot users use Instagram than LinkedIn. And it’s another opportunity to find other organizations that care about similar things as us. 

Q: What else excites you about the possibilities for the brand on Instagram?

Teller: At the end of the day, Springshot is about bringing separated people closer together. When you really think about it, there’s no platform better suited for that than Instagram. That is what Instagram is for: creating community. There is a synergy between what we’re setting out to do and what Instagram’s environment allows users to do. With so much momentum behind our content creation, now is the perfect time to launch this new endeavor.

Courant: Our whole Springshot platform is about bringing teams together: We work together, we win together. We were doing it with the product, and we’re also trying to do it holistically. The product, the business is better reflected on LinkedIn. The holistic human beings coming together is better reflected on Instagram. We need both. It’s not that one is better than the other.

Q: What is the significance of the timing, aligning with Springshot’s 10-year anniversary this fall?

Teller: Now that we’ve built this successful process of creating content, it’s time to evolve. It’s time to tell stories in new ways that meet people where they are. It’s time to have a little more fun. The 10-year anniversary is the perfect catalyst for that. As we celebrate a decade of Springshot’s work, we are diving deeper into the ethos of the company, the people that have built it, and the amazing users who have made it so successful. Instagram is the perfect environment for highlighting all of these powerful stories and bringing everyone together. 

Ideally, by the end of next year, we will have created a community of our own users that engage with us in a whole new way. It’s not just through our app, and it’s not just as they’re doing Missions. Now they can show us the ways that they use Springshot. They can just show us what they do at work. They can show us how they work together. We can share stories together and connect in a more personal way.

Courant: We always want to be seen as part of the team. We also want to have more fun with it. Life has become really serious, work has become really serious. The jobs that these people do are really serious. I want to put a little bit of humor and some fun elements into that work life. The Springshot brand is very equipped to add a little bit of sense of humor and laughter, and that makes everyone healthier overall.

Q: Finally, what was the thinking behind your Instagram handle, @springshotcrew?

Teller: We named ourselves Springshot Crew, not Springshot Inc., and not something overly serious like Springshot Software. It’s Springshot Crew, because we want to reinforce the importance of our community. It’s not just us; it’s every person involved that makes the company operate. Everyone who touches Springshot is part of our crew. 

Follow along as we celebrate the major milestones of Springshot’s 10 year history…

What makes a good visual brand? Is it a strong, recognizable logo? A memorable color palette and design aesthetic? The truth is that branding and design are more important to consumers and employees than they may realize. Branding and design create a visual language — a means of communicating before a single word is said — that connect us to companies and set expectations well ahead of any sales message. Successful branding creates interest, excitement, comfort, familiarity, and trust. 

The work that goes into creating a great visual brand is vast and intricate. At Springshot, we are lucky to have a brilliant partner who helps guide our brand growth and development, including a full visual refresh just last year.

We sat down with our incredible branding and design team, Good Bones Studio, to take a deeper dive into the evolution of Springshot’s visual identity. Learn more from Good Bones Owner and Principal, Caleb Heisey:

Q: What first appealed to you about Springshot? Why did you want to get involved in their brand design? 

The first collaboration between Good Bones and Springshot was actually product-related. They approached us to help design and implement an extensive badge icon system that would exist in their user interface as awards for completed missions. From the get-go, it was clear that Springshot wanted to go above and beyond in creating a platform that was meant to support their users’ well-being. It has been rewarding to work with folks whose main mission is to elevate essential workers and celebrate their critical work.

Springshot CEO Doug Kreuzkamp approached us to help refresh their previous logo, the rocket. It was important for us to bring those same design sensibilities from the badge icons to their brand mark. We continued to work with Springshot in the following years on bringing a fun, friendly, and human-centered design to their internal marketing. 

Q: When did you first join the team, and what was your approach to exploring the redesign?

Having worked with Springshot for several years on product, marketing, and logo design positioned Good Bones to be an excellent partner when approaching their rebrand and website design. We felt like we were already a part of the team and were ingrained in their team workflow and company philosophy.

When approaching the Springshot brand we wanted the visual identity to be more unique and professional than previous iterations. We developed several concepts centered around three brand pillars: mission control, upwards trajectory, and “your crew.” We thought the best way to achieve these brand goals was to lose the tech rocket cliche but keep the spirit of the rocket launch. After presenting our brand concepts deck to the Springshot team, I received an email less than 3 hours later that they loved one concept in particular and were ready to move forward. A Good Bones record!

Q: How does the Springshot brand design help illustrate the company story? What sort of decisions did your team make to bring the brand to life for not only its customers but also its users and its employees?

Springshot decided that their brand should be more playful and human-centered, than technical and authoritative. We all “gravitated” around the idea that Springshot is a gravitational pull that keeps users in your orbit. The idea of satellites, moons, and orbital paths was a natural fit for a Springshot logo. We loved the concept of Springshot being the planet, and your clients using your gravity to propel themselves like a slingshot. The orbit path itself forms an ’S’ which also serves to show speed and velocity. The execution of the logo is rounded and curvy, which feels extremely approachable and friendly. Likewise the rest of the brand follows in this same style. Illustration is also based on loose curves. To bring a bit of seriousness to the brand concept, we’ve selected a small range of colors: a soft black, warm grays, a bright tangerine orange, and a friendly, techy blue.

Q: What makes the Springshot brand stand out, especially against others in the tech space?

Illustration in tech brands isn’t a new strategy, but with Springshot we’ve really taken it to the next level. Both Josephine Courant, the Creative Director, and Doug wanted to “brand” Springshot from the inside out and have a truly holistic graphic approach. Since the initial brand and website launch, we’ve worked with the Springshot engineering and product team to integrate that quirky, whimsical vibe at every level of the application. Many B2B tech companies invest in branding on a marketing level, but it rarely permeates into their product — at least not nearly to the level that Springshot has dedicated to their platform.

Q: The astronaut character, SIM, is a really unique element of the Springshot brand. What inspired its creation?

SIM is truly the keystone of the Springshot brand, not because astronauts are a revolutionary or unique visual in tech branding, but because we’re using the astronaut motif to really give essential workers a sense of importance and community. Each member of a crew has an essential and special role to the group as a whole. No one person is more important than another, and each member is valued. This concept conjures feelings of camaraderie that was important for Springshot to embody.

Q: What do you love most about the branding you developed?

I consider the Springshot logomark to be one of the strongest brand marks we’ve designed at Good Bones. We went through dozens of iterations trying to get a seamless combination of a planetary orbit and an S.

Q: Tell us a little more about Good Bones Studio, your design philosophy, and the amazing work you do!

Good Bones Studio designs big brands for small businesses and tech startups. We’re passionate about helping the little guy get ahead with top-notch logo, website, and packaging design. We’ve worked with clients across several industries, from cyber security to coffee roasters. But the one thing that ties them all together is that they have a product or service that makes the world a better, healthier, and more inclusive place — and that is a value that has never led us astray.

Our name embodies our design philosophy: We design brands with a strong conceptual foundation that will stand the test of time. We don’t chase a style or trend in our designs. We know that building a brand is a huge investment for many of our clients, and we want to ensure that our solution is sound conceptually and stylistically.

It’s a changed world. We are living in an exciting time where the acceleration of technology into our lives has become integrated into how we live both inside and outside of work. Although the speed of technology, automation, data availability and AI is increasing, the need for people to be included in the solutions is still required and helpful in many cases. 

With the influx of IoT devices and multiple software solutions to solve specific issues, many companies can quickly become siloed, where the potential value is not being maximized due to the lack of integration and high-quality data collection.  

Springshot offers unique solutions through a robust dynamic framework and intuitive design. Our platform is powered by the intersection of human and technical systems, resulting in more effective and efficient solutions in highly complex and productivity driven environments. 

We recently touched base with our new Chief Revenue Officer Adam Taylor to get the scoop on how Taylor positions Springshot as he travels the globe meeting with partners. Taylor is passionate about sharing Springshot’s successes and how the platform’s services are seamlessly tailored to various industries, no matter where a company is in its own technology journey. 

Q: When you meet with partners and potential partners, how do you typically position the Springshot platform?

A: In addition to doing my research about the company and openly discussing priorities, I like to engage in a dialogue to better understand their high-level objectives, immediate and near-term priorities, while digging into what measured success looks like for them. Given the flexibility and breadth of Springshot’s offerings, our conversations typically shift down the path that is most important to them both strategically and tactically.  

These days, people expect data to be converted into actionable information and seamlessly integrated into their service delivery solution. However, a lot of companies have disparate and legacy systems which may still serve a specific purpose, though lack the flexibility and speed to adapt to the companies desired end state. We work with our customers to integrate disparate systems and make them better through a seamless and intuitive user interface, while closing gaps in data capture as needed. 

Companies want to make sure that they’re being as effective and efficient as possible. We’re able to help them manage their business and engage their people in highly complex and dynamic environments which leverage multiple technologies and a mobile workforce. At Springshot, we enable mobile workforce teams to be much more engaged, productive and effective in this environment. They need to know where to go, what to do and when they need to be there, and have the missions completed. 

It’s important for people to know that we are a company that can meet you where you are. Not every customer is in the same place with technology. And that’s okay. Some are at the very beginning and they have some immediate needs. We can meet you there. Others are at a much more complex place and very deep within legacy systems. We have solutions to meet that standpoint, too.

Q: What are the main ways that Springshot excels operations via its solutions?

A: We help customers achieve their goals by leveraging the components of our solution that best align with their needs. We do not complicate the discussion with multiple modular offerings. We open the offerings based on what their greatest needs or gaps may be.  There are several areas where customers partner with us including:  

Collaboration: At the heart of Springshot, we are a collaboration platform that drives the effectiveness and efficiency of teams through real-time collaboration. People can easily communicate, whether that’s through texts, through video, through direct channels, or bulletins, including signature capture.

Interface layer: We consolidate and present multiple systems into a seamless, consistent user interface where Springshot is the interface of record and is supporting bi-directional integration with other legacy systems. If customers, for example, have eight different systems for how they manage their business and these systems don’t talk to each other, we can be that interface layer for customers to pull all of that communication together. We complement existing systems in areas that they haven’t closed the gap and that single user interface experience drives a consistent, high-quality solution.

Resource allocation: This refers to day-of operations and what we call Mission Control. Leveraging our (or others) rules-based engines, we optimize operations through the allocation of resources to missions, while capturing confirmation of the work being completed. As former operators, it was critical that we designed our Mission Control to be very flexible to ensure the technology mirrors an optimized process and that customers do not have to modify their processes to leverage technology in real world operations. 

Asset management: This is capturing and presenting critical asset information, whether it be motorized or non-motorized equipment. We are able to integrate into telematics if applicable and also link pre-ops inspections and day-of ops activities into the entire asset management process. We  not only present back summary and specific information on the assets, but we also present the assets, along with people, in live maps with geo-fencing capabilities. 

Forms in Motion: Although our Forms in Motion is a form of digital transformation, it’s important to note that this is not just digitizing a form and putting it into an electronic database. What we’re really doing here is driving a rules-based, dynamic solution which evolves based on key learnings and target areas. Many customers leverage our Forms in Motion to support their inspection, quality and observations programs. We can be as simple as capturing basic data to start with, or as sophisticated as integrating into live feeds (i.e. flights) and leverage a real time rules engine against key information, such as previous quality audits, or target areas obtained by an NPS score. It’s an intelligent platform that can be used to be much more focused, such as: Here’s where you should do the audit, here’s why, and let me link that back to the definition of success. As a result, the team becomes more effective with the time they’re spending auditing.

Q: What are some of Springshot’s other features that benefit companies?

A: We’re able to integrate into the Internet of Things (IoT) and other data feeds. This is incredibly important because we don’t want to be just another disparate system. We want to pull those together and allow our customers to enhance their overall offerings. For example, we are doing a lot of work in the janitorial and facility space, where we are able to capture key data points for IoT devices such as smart trash cans, smart restrooms, and passenger sensors, which we integrate into our day-of ops janitorial solutions, allowing the front-line workers to be much more effective in their role. 

We support bi-directional data flows. We link into customer systems where we push, pull and share data however our customers see fit. At the same time, we present everything in a live map view, so you can see where things are happening. We do this through GPS, and we also leverage beacons.

When we come in, we’re able to work with our customers and pull together a solution that they can use to manage their business daily, holistically — everything from pre-operations, being predictive, organizing in an efficient way to the day of operations, allocating, and validating the missions being completed in the correct amount of time, etc. On the backend, we validate the quality of the work, including the expectation of compliance.

Q: One of Springshot’s core values is driving the humanistic element within its design and function. From your perspective, how does Springshot drive user engagement while validating and motivating people?

A: Not only do we help customers become more productive and effective with the resources that they have, we drive sustained quality, lower unit costs, and allow customers to manage their business much better than anyone else. How do we do that? We start with the people and work to provide a seamless and easy to manage linkage to the technical systems. 

Studies show that high engagement and satisfaction of the employees has a strong positive correlation to the quality of services and satisfaction of guests. Springshot is deeply committed to the experience of the employees and believes in rewards and recognition, which is why our solution has integrated gamification and collaboration into the core of what we do.  

 Our customer success team is made up of former operators, and we are well aware of the challenges faced in operations.

The value proposition of leveraging technology solutions to reduce turnover, increase retention, drive productivity and effectiveness, while increasing quality scores and lowering safety risks is powerful. However, if you don’t start with having the people engaged and equipped to integrate enabling technology into their daily processes, then the product will fail. This is why we are so focused on the people side of the equation, along with the technical. 

On the backend of our new Springshot Forms auditing platform, a complex template structure runs seamlessly, ensuring that auditors communicate effectively with their teams and efficiently capture data. The customizable auditing platform is set to its specific collection requirements before any Missions are performed, and through the entirely new user interface that emphasizes clean design, teams experience a consistent workflow. Springshot Forms helps ease task organization, improves collaboration, allows for immediate notifications about adjustments or fixes, and verifies completion. This is the logical quality platform you’ve been waiting for.

We recently caught up with Roshan Patel, VP Product at Springshot, who walked through the goals of Springshot Forms and highlighted its most useful tools and features.

Question: How does the structure of Springshot Forms work to ensure tasks completed by remote teams are done so on time and correctly?

A: The goal of Springshot Forms is to help our customers create a better quality product. We do this by allowing auditors to easily capture high-fidelity data, allowing crew members to get immediate feedback on their performance, and providing a platform for collaboration around the structured data. These goals can only be achieved through a backend that accurately and granularly models the real world and supports the intuitive interfaces created by Hannah and our design team. 

Springshot has experience supporting safety, facility conditioning, and customer experience audits, but I’ll focus on aircraft turns. For airline partners, we break down every section of the aircraft. We have sections defined as first class seats, economy seats, lavatories, galleys, carpets, and flight decks. Within each of those sections, our structure allows us to determine how many individual objects we want an auditor to audit. Because every part of every aircraft is modeled at the most granular level, we are able to build algorithms to smartly guide the auditor on where they should focus their attention. 

The auditor no longer has to carry the mental burden of trying to figure out “how many and which seats should I audit?” If an airline partner would like 30% of the economy class seats audited, Springshot Forms will highlight exactly which seats should be the auditor’s focus. Springshot Forms allows the auditor to complete an audit faster and increase the fidelity of the data by removing decisions that an algorithm can make.

Q: Tell us about Springshot Forms’ built-in feedback feature?

A: For us, Springshot Forms, as a quality platform, is not just checking if the work was completed to spec or not. The only way to drive systematic improvements — and drive up quality scores — is to provide immediate feedback to the crew performing the work. This is not auditing for the sake of slapping wrists. When an auditor fails an item on Springshot Forms, we immediately provide that feedback to the person who performed the work. We believe people want to do better, and with the closed feedback loop between the crew that performed the work and the auditor, everyone knows exactly how to do better. 

Additionally, positive feedback is also provided. Celebrating good work is just as valuable and bringing awareness to areas of improvement. As a result, Springshot Forms gives more context into what is being done, how it can be fixed moving forward, and what is going well. It’s an instantaneous feedback loop.

We actually take the idea of feedback even further: Because every object is structured and because we have built a community of users who are working on the flight with all the other necessary job roles, we have created a product that allows users to easily open channels of text or voice communication directly to the necessary people. The auditor has the ability to seamlessly bring the gate agent, cabin cleaner, and maintenance crew into a channel because of a broken seat and reduce the time it requires to fix the problem.

Q: How then does Springshot Forms use the data that’s collected during the auditing process to analyze for trends and, subsequently, to help further customize templates?

A: As I mentioned, our model has broken down and structured everything that could be audited. This has allowed us to build a scoring algorithm that helps easily highlight systematic trends in an operation and scores the audits based on the relative importance of audited areas. It allows us to identify where the team should focus efforts to drive operational improvements. For example, crumbs on the seat of a first class seat is going to be more impactful to the score of the audit than seatbelts not being crossed in economy. 

From our experience, we know that operational goals can move. Our scoring is built to be dynamic and change along with our customers needs and insights from previous audits. If our customer wants to focus on highlighting a clean entryway because that is the first impression for their guests, we can adjust the scoring to have a higher weight on the entryway. Over time, we may come to understand that the entryway remains clean but the restrooms are now a source of audit failures. In that case, we can rebuild Springshot Forms’ scoring feature to add more weight to the cleanliness of the restrooms. 

Our Customer Success team will sit down with our partners and identify the best way to break down an audit, determine the scoring algorithm, and consult on the optimal terminology of each string the auditor will have to read. Adding, removing, and editing audits on Springshot Forms is very easy and getting an entire quality program up and running from scratch can be done in a matter of days.

Q: What are some of Springshot Forms’ features that your users get most excited about?

A: Tagging and Reporting are two features that go hand-in-hand. A beautiful feature on Springshot Forms is the ability to add tags. Tags are customizable based on the customer’s requirements and structured inside of Springshot. An auditor doesn’t have to think about how to describe the crumbs that are on the ground in a free text box, for example. They would be able to tag “Crumbs on floor.” It’s very easy. These tags can be built based on customer requirements or built over time based on audit data that we collect.

On the data side, it adds an element that someone can more easily analyze. A typical audit may ask an auditor to check that the “floors are free of crumbs and debris.” It is valuable to know if this passes or fails. But with tags, we make it very easy to create a list, such as “large crumbs, plastic bags, gum, food crumbs.” We can get insights into the fact that the floors are dirty, without being intrusive to the auditor. We are able to collect more granular data with tags to figure out what is specifically causing the failure. 

With Springshot Forms’ Rapid Photo feature, a crew member has the ability to quickly create a new form, take photos of any defects, and get out of the way of the operation. They can add any additional tags and additional comments later. It’s the ability to get in, document with photos, and then come back and sit down at a quiet time and fill all the information in. The auditor no longer has to feel rushed to document everything while feeling the pressure of being a bottleneck in the operation.

And finally, via My Crew, a crew member or manager can see the names and roles of everyone who is responsible for turning a plane around: caterers, cabin cleaners, flight attendants, baggage transfer drivers, etc. It makes messaging with other crew members more personable; you are no longer just talking to the cabin cleaner, you are talking to Doug. Creating a sense of belonging — with something as fundamental as addressing a co-worker by name — allows teams to work better together. My Crew allows the team to communicate directly with the people responsible for the work, rather than going through the current pathway of communicating via several lines of management to resolve an issue. 

The last person that’s going onto the aircraft is the auditor. With Springshot Forms, if the auditor finds a seat that fails because there are crumbs in the seat, they can directly communicate with the cabin cleaner who cleaned the specific seat to re-clean the seat, and if necessary, inform the gate agent of the current situation. This reduces defects because they’re caught before an airline customer sees them.

Springshot’s design team has created an intuitive platform that enhances collaboration and helps solve problems among remote workforces. This creative process takes an attention to detail that Hannah Andersen, Senior Product Manager at Springshot, knows all too well given her five years with our company. 

At its core, Springshot’s newest feature, our auditing platform called Springshot Forms, is an easy-to-use tool that simplifies communication between remote teams and ensures tasks have been completed. Its clean design buildout, led by Andersen, improves the experience when workforces connect while completing Missions and especially during the verification, or audit, process that is the key component to Forms.

Following the recent rollout of Springshot Forms, Andersen talked about the humanistic approach we take to our design and user interface solutions.

Can you talk through your design process for Springshot overall and for Forms?

We focus on making design simple, innovative, fun, and easy to use. The first step was deciding what we want to display to users, what relevant information they may need. The customer may tell us they want something specific, but it’s our job as the product and design team to go beyond that and really put our head in their position and think beyond the limits of what they may actually need, while also thinking about the persona of the user while on the application. 

Alot of the design and ideation process is focused on the Aviation industry, but whenever we develop any feature or product, we try to make it as generic as possible so it can be used for many different workflows and in any industry, such as restaurants or pet grooming. We always ask ourselves: Would it work in the same way? We are making sure that this feature can benefit all of the people within the operation.

Often users don’t come from a very technical background so it’s definitely important that a platform is easy to use for someone who isn’t that comfortable with technology. We are also thinking about the conditions and the person that’s going to be using the application. We think about whether the button placement will work. We also think about what the weather conditions are — is it raining? Is it sunny? Are the users on a cart, are they moving? Is English their first language? Should we use an icon instead of words? What makes sense when words are translated into German, Japanese and Spanish? Do we have an icon and text? Do the words still fit in the space when they are translated?

What does your team do once you understand users and how they would interact with Springshot?

Once we have an understanding of a customer’s issues and figure out how we want to tackle them, it is critical to start thinking about the real use cases of how this is affecting people in the operation using the application.This is an intensive collaboration, and we go through every single pixel and use case. We brainstorm what would happen if this occurs or if that takes place. We are anticipating what their questions are going to be, and what the issues are going to be to try to solve them in this phase. One design could have 20 different scenarios or answers for one user. The same treatment may not make sense for one person versus another. We run all the different scenarios, and we built it in a way that can make it adapt and be customizable.

Then, we begin to develop wireframes to bring the idea to life through innovative ways to display the information. We build out the wireframes and hand off a skeleton design to the design team. We meet internally and communicate different needs and requirements. It’s an intensive design review process. We are showing complex information in a clear way, and we try not to overwhelm users with too many data points. 

As a team, we work well together. We all bring in very different points of view, and we are a great mix of analytical and creative brains.

How does the use of color factor into your designs for Forms and Springshot as a whole?

Everything we do is intentional in terms of colors, but we try to use color sparingly so that it’s for specific reasons. For example, a blue area means it’s clickable. We are also trying to stay consistent on the web interface as close as we can to the mobile application.

It’s also the small touches of color that make it fun. Users can choose a channel avatar or their own icons, and we spend time coming up with all the different colors, designs and choices. We often have so many ideas we need to have an internal vote on our favorite designs and color choices.

One area to note is that customers have been asking for years about adding a tagging functionality. And now with our Tagging feature within Springshot Forms, auditors can tag Mission outcomes with specific issues, such as broken seats. A failed outcome generates a discussion thread, where photos, tags and comments are added. Airlines look at the tags and recognize the most common tags; for example, on the 737’s, the biggest issue is broken seats. This tag is really beneficial for customers to identify higher level issues that are happening within the operation and then take action collaboratively in real time. A cleaner is tagged to try to fix the issue, for example.

The purple color of the tags add visual interest for the tags on the screen, and we chose that color intentionally. We tried many different colors of tags before we settled on purple for a balance with the rest of the color palette.

How does your design help engage users?

The term we like to use with the hierarchy of information is “progressive reveal.” This means showing the right information at the right time and not overwhelming the user. They just need: What it is, where they need to go, and what time does it start. We try to hide the secondary information, but also provide the flexibility that if users want to see everything, they can check all the boxes on the filter and it can show everything. We try and keep the messaging very light, such as, “great job,” “keep going,” or “we see you.” We definitely try to make the general brand messaging very friendly. 

Springshot also leverages gamification within Missions, and a great way to engage users is through XP points that they can earn during each Mission. If they complete all their tasks within certain criteria, such as speed or engagement, they can earn XP points. You can see everyone who worked on the Mission, and you can see who earned the most XP points. It’s kind of like a competition with a leaderboard. 

We want people to feel empowered to do their work through this app. We want them to feel proud of the work they did and for other people to see their accomplishments. 

What’s next for you to focus on at Springshot?

We’re brainstorming and strategizing how we can build upon user engagement and continue to help people feel empowered and recognized. We also are working on lots of creative solutions for the product in the upcoming months and excited to take the user experience to another level.

We are thrilled to announce that our team is expanding once again, with the appointment of brand-builder Thomas J. Marano to our Board of Advisors.

Marano, who will help craft Springshot’s broader growth strategy, is a seasoned sales and marketing executive who has built multiple global brands over his 45-year career. Given the three brands he helped build in aviation alone – AHL Services, Air Serv and Unifi/DGS – Marano has unique experience helping teams leverage enabling technology to deliver more productive, more effective and better-differentiated services in airport operations. His deep commitment to empowering businesses with data will push Springshot to new heights.

“Tom will help us accelerate the value Springshot delivers to its customers, both inside and outside aviation,” said Doug Kreuzkamp, Springshot Founder and CEO. “We’ve built a dynamic service delivery platform. Now is the time to partner with thought leaders like Tom to help us focus on the bigger picture, closer align with our customers and continue transforming the mobile workforce landscape.”

Marano spent the last 25 years in service industries predominantly in the aviation sector and shares Springshot’s commitment to helping employees engage with technology, create operational cost efficiencies and improve the airport passenger experience.

For Marano, who recently retired from leading the largest aviation services company in the United States (Unifi, formerly Delta Global Services “DGS”), partnering again with the Springshot executive leadership team — including Kreuzkamp, Chief Customer Officer Clint Powell and new Chief Revenue Officer Adam Taylor — is a perfect transition. He first began working alongside Kreuzkamp, Powell and Taylor in 2005 at aviation services company Air Serv, and looks forward to working with the team again to expand Springshot’s technological innovation and best-in-class data aggregation and analysis.

“I’m delighted to be part of the team. I believe that Springshot is the single biggest opportunity I’ve seen in many years. What Springshot has been able to establish is a platform for the future that is not only substantially important and delivers amazing value in aviation but that can be transitioned into other verticals, and this is exceptionally exciting,” said Marano. “We have a mobile workforce platform that engages employees, drives the experience of passengers, aligns objectives by combining human and technical systems and creates tremendous workforce productivity and retention.”

Marano knows first-hand how important it is to leverage technology to enable labor-intensive service industries like airlines to better collaborate with employees. Marano helped build three $1 billion aviation service brands. Most recently, he was the CEO of Argenbright Holdings for four years overseeing three business units, including Unifi/DGS, SecurAmerica and ERMC. There, he helped with the joint venture acquisition of DGS with Delta Air Lines and grew its aviation portfolio from $420 Million to over $800 Million.

Prior to Argenbright, Marano was the CEO of Air Serv, where he grew the business to over $1 Billion in sales in 15 years before eventually helping sell the company to ABM Industries. He subsequently ran ABM’s aviation services business as a member of the executive committee, repositioning and transforming its aviation offerings.

Before Air Serv/ABM, Marano served as Chief Operating Officer of AHL Services, where he grew the company to a $1 Billion global workforce management company over six years, contributing marketing and strategy to help take the company public in 1997.

Passion, purpose and energy

Marano’s career also includes 20 years outside aviation, in consumer goods roles at Apple Computer, Coca-Cola Co., Pepsi Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble in offices across the Americas. He has deep expertise in helping companies gain market share and, and in his words, “overcome unique challenges.”

Notably, Marano worked alongside Steve Jobs at Apple Computer as VP of Sales and Marketing for the U.S., where he was responsible for $2.4 Billion in annual revenues. Marano played a role reorganizing the company in 1985 and improved Macintosh sales by 150% in the midst of that decade’s financial crisis, while simultaneously eliminating $600 Million in costs.

After leaving Apple, Marano was VP of Sales and Marketing in the fountain division at Coca-Cola for nearly eight years. He led the global reintroduction of Coca Cola Classic into chain restaurants and launched the company’s global account management system.

Marano also worked at Pepsi Cola Co. (now PepsiCo Inc.) where he held multiple marketing management positions and ultimately became VP of Business Development in the foodservice division. He led the growth of Pepsi market share and secured brand positioning via the success of the Pepsi Challenge, the legendary blind taste test against Coke in the mid-1980s.

“I’m a big believer that if you align your team around a culture of caring, high performance, and collaboration like Springshot does,” said Marano, “then you are supporting workers. We are always there to make sure people get the right tools to do their jobs better, and if they can’t, how can we help solve their issues?”

Marano holds a ​​master’s degree in systems management from the University of Southern California and a bachelor of science degree in education from the University of Virginia.

Marano is a member of the advisory board at robotics company Brain Corp and the CEO of Thinc, a consulting company focused on enabling labor services businesses by implementing digital service delivery systems that leverage high-touch new tech.

Please join us in welcoming Tom Marano to Springshot’s Board of Advisors!

About Springshot

Springshot digitally transforms operations. Through its “Springshot” platform, the San Francisco-based software company helps essential workers perform repetitive tasks with greater speed and reliability. Its collaboration, task distribution, and performance management features help airlines, airports and ground handlers reduce labor expenses and costly service failures.

Springshot has a large and growing global footprint. Founded in 2011 by former aviation operators, the Company has master agreements with many of the world’s leading airlines and aviation service providers and has recently expanded its footprint to include dynamic industries outside aviation like facilities cleaning, restaurants, healthcare and city management. In 2021, the company supported operations at one of the world’s premier annual sporting events, the National Football League’s Super Bowl LV.