Matt Kinberg

Vela

A unique luxury cannabis store located in downtown Seattle.

Creative & Art Direction • UX Design • Web Development

Vela

About This Work

Welcome to a high-touch luxury shopping experience: The "Apple store" of recreational cannabis.  I individually contributed to the UX, managed the design process, and solely developed their unique website experience which included a digital menu displayed on iPads located around the store.  The slick menu layout and functionality surpassed all competition and provided a simple user experience. Education was a large part of their business model, debunking myths about cannabis consumption and strategically targeting an older demographic. They made different types of product easy to understand, especially for first time users.  Their educational Spectrum was a simple way for customers to choose the best product for themselves and desired feeling.  They also hosted weekly events to drive brand awareness.  Fun fact - Snoop Dogg was a speaker at one event.

My Roles

  • Creative & Art Direction
    • Concepting (collaborated)
    • Facilitated Client Presentations
    • Managed Senior Visual Designer
  • IA / UX Design
    • Requirement Gathering & Competitor Research
    • Sitemap
    • Wireframing
  • Web Development
    • Front-end Development (HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX)
    • Back-end Development (ExpressionEngine/PHP)
    • System and Database Administration (LAMP/MYSQL)
  • Account and Project Management

Key Contributions

  1. Concepted and developed a unique digital menu which was also used in-store on iPad devices.
  2. Animated the "Vela Spectrum™" feature to help emotionally guide novice cannabis around the different types of products available.
  3. Developed countless CSS3 animations with high attention to interaction design.
  4. Created a custom event calendar for in-store company events.
  5. Developed a sleek blog-style article repository for cannabis education ("Cannabis 101").
  6. 13 fully responsive unique page templates.
  7. Intuitive custom content management system for easy content authoring and editing.
  8. I developed every aspect of the website by hand with minimal frameworks including custom modals.

Brick and Mortar Storefront Examples

Storefront (left), Entryway Art (top right), Grow Room Viewing Area (bottom right)

Website Walk-Through (production)

Digital Retail Experience

Vela leveraged a custom digital menu system on multiple iPad devices around their brick-and-mortar storefront. These devices alleviated the need for a print menu and gave customers instant access to products, their product experiential spectrum, and all other aspects of the website such as in-store events. I concepted and designed every aspect of the digital menu.  The product menu pulled information real-time from the content management system custom developed using ExpressionEngine.

Product Menu (screenshot)

Multi-category Javascript Filtering

Education Spectrum (in-store)

Spectrum in-store example

Spectrum Experience Example (touch-friendly)

Spectrum screenshot example

Process Examples

Sitemap, Wireframes, & Design Comps.

Final Sitemap Example

Main Navigation Modal (wireframe)

Product Menu Modal (wireframe)

Experience Page (wireframe)

Home (design comp)

Product Menu Modal (design comp)

Event Detail (design comp)

Personal Recommendation

Left quote

Matt is great to work with; he has a professional approach, does high-caliber work, and makes the process of building a website fun. We had a from-the-ground-up project with a tight timeline. Matt exceeded our expectations. Despite the aggressive timeline, he was thoughtful about creating a unique user experience. Our team was also very particular about the visual design; Matt did a great job of embracing our style while providing practical ways to enhance the functionality of the site. On the front end, the website was beautiful and encouraged exploration and further page views. The back-end experience was great, as well; Matt set up a very intuitive content management system that made it easy for our team to update and maintain. I would work with Matt again in a heartbeat.

Right quote
Erin Green

Erin Green

Director of Operations at Vela