Reimagining the eXact—the print industry’s standard tool for measuring and matching color.

X-Rite Pantone

Practice:

Contextual Interviews
Prototyping
Usability Testing

What’s the next evolution of a tool users already swear by?

X-Rite—parent company of the Pantone color matching system—is the leader in color science and technology. Their handheld color measurement devices and software are used across the globe for ensuring that brand colors are consistent to the human eye across all applications—from the billboard, to the cardboard box, to the metal can of soda in your hand.

Context

The eXact 1 has been the printing and packaging industry’s staple for ensuring that brand colors and ink densities appear consistent across substrates and applications—from the ink lab to the printing press. However, the eXact 1’s convoluted interface and poor ergonomics (namely, the clamshell design that springs off of slanted desks) presented an opportunity to re-evaluate the experience around the device and design a new and improved second generation device for the eXact’s cult following.

The Challenge

Print and color professionals in a lab, one wearing a green hair cover and another an orange hair cover, working with electronic devices and monitors displaying colorimetric data.
Print lab space with a handheld colorimetric device, documents, and a barcode scanner on the desk.

Press Operator: The Press Operator—one of the many user types of eXact—conducts a patch test with the device.
Work Station: The Press Operator’s work station, featuring the eXact in tethered mode, a stack of patch tests and reference sheet hung on the wall.

We visited several printing facilities and ink labs to meet with a range of eXact users and interview them while they went about their processes, using the device in context. This helped us better understand their unique workflows, pain points and workarounds. Which, ultimately helped us develop personas and service blueprints.

In the Field

Flowchart of the process for a commercial off-set printing press, showing steps from client sign-off to shipping, with different colors indicating roles for quality assurance, press operation, and client approval.
A persona profile document, featuring a black-and-white photo of a young man working at a press machine in an industrial setting, with a pink overlay on the right side of the image containing text about Joe 'Spike' Brooks, a press operator.

Persona Profile: One of our many personas, dubbed “Spike” for easy reference.
Service Blueprint: I created a service blueprint for each user environment, mapping every interaction with tech or people. Printed in large format, they covered our meeting room walls to anchor conversations in real user experiences.

Mapping Complexity

Because of the complex and intricately connected nature of the handheld device, building out service blueprints was critical in the beginning—so we could easily reference the nuanced workflows throughout the research and design process. Each user interacted with the device differently and paired it with different X-Rite software, so I led the team in creating a service blueprint for each persona.

A scatter plot with four quadrants showing prioritization categories. The top left is labeled 'Prioritize First' with high impact and low effort. The bottom left is 'Prioritize Second' with low impact and effort. The bottom right is 'Don't Do (?)' with low impact and high effort. The plot has a yellow circle in 'Prioritize Second' and a pink circle in 'Don't Do (?)'. High impact to users is on the vertical axis, and effort is on the horizontal axis.

Usability Testing Results: Analyzing the completion rate of each task in a workflow pointed out the areas that still needed to be ironed out.

After interviewing users directly and taking stock of all customer feedback, we prioritized UI updates based upon how impactful they would be to the user and how much effort they would take to develop.

Prioritization

Person using a smartphone to capture an image of a printed color test sheet on a white table, with a laptop partially visible on the right.
A report screen showing task completion rates, pain points, and user feelings with a pie chart, colored task timeline, and feedback comments.

Working Prototype: We rigged a pseudo-eXact—an iPhone displaying a “tap-through” prototype attached to a small cardboard box (about the size of the final device)—and observed participants as they tackled each workflow.

Participants received a handheld prototype of the eXact and a list of tasks that reflected user workflows. Doing this with a range of user types and skill levels was critical to understanding where novices would get tripped up or experts were slowed down. Several rounds of this helped us design the most seamless color measuring experience the Pantone universe has ever seen.

Usability Testing

A color calibration Spectrophotometer device placed on a colorful color chart with printed color swatches and charts.

Gen2 Release—
7% more workflow efficiency

The result was the release of the second generation eXact device, which sported the first-of-its-kind video targeting system, 33% more screen space and 7% more workflow efficiency—the most intelligent and integrated device on the market. Turns out, you can render the gold standard platinum.

I'm available for consulting roles or open to becoming part of an in-house team.

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