Black Lotus Ventures (2026)

15/12/2022

The visual design for the project was meant to balance a classic, slightly more conservative aesthetic with the innovation that the platform provides. Our goal was for the design to feel trustworthy, simple, and intuitive. We built the color palette around this concept. To add a bit of creativity in our visuals, we created masked shapes inspired by solar panels to display images throughout the marketing assets. This was also a play off of the logo.

You’ll see these visuals and graphics throughout the website. We created the initial design system for the marketing website to help support sales. For B2B SAAS companies you always want to have a primary landing page, and surfaces for the services, processes, the company overview, and key questions for prospects.

The website is just one part of the process. You need a whole sales enablement kit that spans multiple channels if you really want to push the ball forward. Which is why we created a set of one pagers for the sales and partnerships team to use during pitch meetings or to send as takeaways. We designed these based on their sales process and requirements for sales enablement.

Once we completed the core design, development, and marketing deliverables we moved onto the pitch deck. We created a master pitch deck to empower the team during their fundraising. The team was able to take the deck and the MVP we designed to secure funding within 6 months. They secured funding from Forbright Bank, Cross River Digital Ventures, Grotech Ventures, Early Light Ventures and the Maryland Momentum Fund.

15/12/2022

Sunstones goal was to create a smart solution for SMB businesses, Installers and Financial Institutions in the solar energy sector.

The product was designed with two core user groups in mind: Installers and SMB users.

Installers want to bring solar to more commercial buildings, but these projects are difficult and expensive.

SMBs want to leverage solar to go green, save on overhead, and get the tax incentives. But they need to fund these projects without compromising their working capital.

It all comes down to making financing options accessible for everyone involved — which is exactly what sunstone does.

Installers can create an account and leverage it to provide SMB clients with financing options and a streamlined application flow that connects prospects with Sunstone’s network of banks and lenders.

We designed the platform to be a simple dashboard product that made it easy for installers to register, send out invitations and applications, track progress, and manage their pipeline of prospects.

We also made it easy for SMBs to sign up, apply, and see their status. One of our main inspirations from a UI perspective was TurboTax. Doing your taxes is overwhelming there’s a lot of detailed steps involved and data to submit. Similar to applying for financing. Just like TurboTax, we chunked out the process, minimized cognitive overload, and made it easier to move through the application at your own pace.

15/12/2022

Sunstone Credit was launched by Ex-Snapchat and PayPal founders who joined forces with Solar industry execs. They recently closed a round of venture capital funding to solve one of the greatest threats facing humanity today — climate change.

The future of our planet depends on transitioning to more sustainable carbon-free energy sources. Solar power is one the best ways to do this.

But going solar is easier said than done. The real key to going green is actually financing….

The process is expensive and involves navigating the challenges of government sponsored programs, tax incentives, and complex partnerships.

This led to the systematic exclusion of the SMBs who could make the biggest difference towards climate change and benefit from this technology the most.

That’s where Sunstone comes in. Their mission is to provide access to solar energy for small and medium sized businesses. This will help SMBs save money, reduce their electricity bills, and lessen their carbon footprint.

They created a tech platform that seamlessly connects SMBs who want to go solar, developers who can install the technology, and institutions who can finance the projects.

They partnered with us to design their platform to be simple and easy to use. Our task was to create a design system and best-in-class user experience that matched the technology on the backend. We also designed their marketing website and sales enablement assets.

One of our favorite parts of this engagement is how they took the design we created, created their own content strategy, and iterated on all of the assets to really bring them to life. Design is dynamic and iterative. It’s never really done. You should always be looking to see how you evolve your design to ensure you are solving the right problems and communicating effectively. When you work with an agency partner, you will get a head start, but the work doesn’t end when the engagement does. That’s actually when the real work begins. Your design system is only as good as it’s utility. Which is why we are proud of how the team continued to maintain and expand post engagement. That’s what collaboration looks like.

15/12/2022

We were initially going back and forth on what colors to use to anchor the brand. But in user feedback we identified an opportunity to make the app more personal and engaging by introducing customization.

Prayer and mediation is highly personal, the team saw success allowing people to customize their meditation music, and customization was a popular competitor feature.

So we introduced themes into the app to allow people to choose their app color, background music, and background image theme to really make the app feel like their own.

Social sharing is also another way of telling the world who you are, what you care about, and what you find interesting. We saw a lot of existing sharing activity happening from our initial users.

So we created a templated share flow design with 2 variants. It leverages the primary color of the track cover or the image itself to create a template for social media. This makes it easier to share and incentivizes people to do so.

We designed our marketing assets around the concept of meditation inspired imagery. We discovered that one of the most delightful and comforting parts of competitor apps was their use of nature inspired backgrounds. This was an emotional design angle to allude to the feeling of meditating in nature.

We leverage this by creating our own set of backgrounds, including layouts that display: ocean water, starry nights, light flares, and gradients to speak to the sonic waves and auditory experience.

In conclusion, It was fun working with a Google team and understanding their approach to product and startups.

Arise was the first app of its kind that we designed -- a faith inspired version of Calm, Headspace, and Spotify.

We’re glad we were able to work with them on the rebrand and look forward to seeing the continued success of Arise and the rest of the App Drop team.

15/12/2022

The user experience of this app was built around discovering and engaging with the audio content. So we split our focus into the home feed experience, category pages, browsing experience, profile, playback, sharing, and monetization.

The home feed is their introduction to the experience, so we focused on creating a synthesized bird’s eye view of their content. We start with a personal greeting at the top to add a hint of personalization. This is followed by a featured header module that will serve as prime real estate for spotlighted content.

For the remaining content we created a horizontal scroll layout that mirrored what users would expect from an audio app like Spotify or Apple music. The mental models are the same, the app has playlists, albums, and tracks, so we simplified.

Content is organized into sections, playlists, and albums. The main categories are mediation, sleep, and scripture. Each of which carries an assortment of themed meditations and prayers users can listen to and follow along.

This profile section was highly functional. We made it easy for people to access their playlists and listening history, and if they wanted to participate in a Daily Challenge, they could track their progress.

The playback experience is simple and straightforward. But the things that make this flow special are:
* Choose background music: This gives people ultimate control over their meditative experience by allowing them to select if they want music and what type.
* Quote interactions: Now when users tap the quote icon, they’ll see quote excerpts from the track displayed as a cover overlay.
* Add to playlist: This may come as a surprise but the team was so early in their development they didn’t have a playlist feature. Naturally this is tablestakes for an audio app. So introduced the feature to help people save and organize their favorite content.

15/12/2022

Arise is an app launched by Ex-Google founders. The team also secured funding from in the inaugural Black Ambition Prize. They created a company called AppDrop which is a platform to build apps. And Arise is one of their first projects.

The vision for Arise is to be a competitor to Calm and Headspace, but with a focus on spirituality content. Arise provides a dedicated space for mediation, prayer, and casual listening. They connect people to on demand guided prayers and meditations content.

They already launched an MVP and built up a loyal community of supporters. People loved the app and kept coming back.

Given their initial traction, the team reached out to us to redesign the brand and mobile app.

The goal was to help them improve the experience for current users and create a design system that could grow with them.

We wanted the design of the app to feel subtle and caring. In our initial research, we discovered that people often came to the app early in the morning or right before bed. The most popular content on the app were the “Sleep” tracks.

In our design explorations we veered away from colors that were too bright or jarring. We wanted to use colors that tied back to tradition and were calming.

This is how we settled on Emerald green for abundance, royal purple for regality, midnight blue for meditation, and dark mode for focus.

We chose midnight blue as the default color since it matched the branding well, performed well, and best delivered on the goal of subtlety and calmness.

15/12/2022

Once we finished designing the mobile and desktop apps, we moved onto the website. The primary goal of the website was to serve as an awareness and user engagement surface. So we built the site around a product promotion and content.

One of the primary goals of the website was to create awareness of the brand the product as a whole. So we created a landing page as a primary marketing surface.

We also created a “How it Works” page that breaks down everything about Nxstep, the app, the process, the mentor network and more. This helps educate users who need more information before making a decision.

Content was an important pillar because it allowed them to engage with their audience. We helped them create an on-site blog for articles written by the editorial team, mentors, or guest writers.

We also allowed website visitors to access Nxstep’s directory of colleges. This serves as a lead magnet for the brand and helps SEO.

The final step of the process was to create a set of sales templates that the team could use for product promotion. We leveraged the brand guidelines we created to design 3 templates with 2 different color variants.

These templates were built around 3 sales pillars:
Highlighting the product with UI and key benefits
Leveraging data and insights to sell
Leaning into testimonials for credibility

The final product is simple, lightweight, and visually engaging. True to the brand, easy to edit, and easily sent as an email or takeaway from a meeting.

In hindsight, this was a very rewarding project. We love designing for education. Because education is everything. It’s what creates opportunity and social mobility.

But far too many are underserved and taught to neglect their academics because the material or delivery isn’t engaging, or because they don’t have the support they need.

But now with NXSTEP, that’s changing. Everybody everywhere will have access to world class student mentors support them in achieving their goals.

That’s powerful.
That’s a mission worth rallying for.
That’s Black Lotus.

15/12/2022

The NXSTEP app had 3 primary user groups.

Students were the primary users who engaged with content and peers.

Mentors provided content, peer support, and academic/professional advisory.

Admins oversaw student activity and engagement to stay informed of progress. So we designed the app around each user’s core needs.

Students
For students we started by creating a dashboard to have one central point of reference that allows them to access key touchpoints and see latest activity.

We created an explore feed with separate tabs for each content pillar to make it easy for folks to find what they needed. Users could also easily save and revisit all of this content.

We created a user profile that served like a resume for the students. This way anytime a student was connecting with a mentor, the conversations could be more focused and interactive.

We also designed a hub for Information on specific Colleges along with community groups for each school. This allows students to get all the info they need on any school they’re interested in..

Mentors
NXSTEP’s mentorship network is a part of their secret sauce. Mentors contributed to the app by providing peer mentorship and sharing content on their college experience and helpful tips.

Mentors have the ability to share their academic disciplines and skills. They can also create paid mentorship packages to allow students to schedule coaching sessions with them.

They also created in-app content for students. Students can browse photos, videos, and article posts that cover every aspect of the college experience. From dealing with financial aid to adjusting to an 18-credit schedule.

Admins
We also had to consider the needs of the administrators responsible for the success of their students. They need to be able to identify trends and leverage that to make decisions about curriculum and support.

So we created an admin dashboard that gave them insight into how they can tailor their partnerships, recruiting, and/or counseling strategy.

This provided a 360 view of their cohort and everything they need to support them.

15/12/2022

Nxstep is a startup founded by former engineers from Google and Twitter. As they embarked on their academic and career journeys, they noticed that the path to success wasn’t always clear. The landscape has changed a lot and unfortunately not all schools and counselors have the resources and information needed to support their students.

This knowledge gap is most critical during the high school to college transition. If you think back, how did you decide which university to attend? It was likely due to general prestige, family legacy, referrals, or your social environment growing up.

But unless you know students who walked that path, it’s hard to know EXACTLY what would be the best fit for you.

So the founders of NXSTEP created a new app to address these challenges in the education space. They are redefining college exploration and job search through crowdsourced content, social groups, and 1:1 mentorship.

Since launch they’ve signed up 500+ students and mentors and partnered with 200+ colleges across the country.

Given the success of their initial launch, they reached out to us to help rebrand and redesign their app in order to drive awareness, credibility, and engagement.

We designed the NXSTEP mobile and desktop app. We also redesigned their marketing website and created sales enablement assets for them.

The visual design direction of the brand was intended to:
- Inspire trust and credibility
- Feel dynamic and vibrant

Education is a traditional industry, but their constituents were Gen Z teens. So we had to make the brand feel legitimate for university partnerships and parent perception. But we had to make it feel relevant and dynamic to entice students to use it.

We chose two primary colors to anchor on. A strong blue that is classic and often associated with education.

And a fresh radiant green to represent attainment and progression. We designed the rest of the palette to complement, balance, and contrast.

15/12/2022

From a UX standpoint, the website had a few key objectives we had to solve for.
- Introducing the brand and the product
- Provide context on the company and team
- Providing an engaging onboarding experience

We addressed the introduction in our design of the landing page and product page. But we took things a step further by creating a set of secondary pages that allowed the team to reinforce their key messages and sales points.

This included:
* An about page for them to share their principles
* FAQ page to answer common questions
* A contact page to get in touch
* A brand partnerships page for potential collaborations

We took things a step further by creating a go to market kit that included a revamped pitch deck, one pagers, and social templates to ensure the team had all the right collateral they needed across channels.

15/12/2022

Many startups come to us to relaunch the entire company. Which usually includes a web revamp and a new product. And that means the website is almost always ready to ship before the app is. So what do you do in those moments? How do you leverage your website to build anticipation and engage your audience while you wait for your app to launch?��*Hand-motions to you* — Walk with me fam. ��There are two things to solve for: 1) Capturing intent via sign ups and 2) Providing value up front while they wait.

In the case of The Ave, We solved this by finding an intersection of the brand’s purpose and what users are looking for.

Seventh is about creating a space for people to come together. So while the audio experiences were still being built out, we designed strategy around content curation to keep people engaged.

First off, the registration flow we created was airtight and it allowed people to create accounts on the website that would carryover to the app automatically. This way the team already had a seed audience of users as soon as they hit the market.

Next, once they login, we created a content dashboard for them. They’ll be able to get a sneak peak of the app that only registered users can see and they’ll get access to curated playlists, tweets, articles, and more. ��The content is key because it allows them to provide entertainment value, tap into their strengths for creating spaces through curating, and start getting a feel for user preferences from what they engage with.��And to create a viral loop we designed a sharing feature that would allow users to share their profiles and RSVP on social media. This was an interesting exercise because we took advantage of the social psychology of sharing.

People share things that they identify with, things they think are cool, and things that increase their perceived value. So how could we get them to share that they just signed up for an app?��Well what if we re-framed it from signing up for another app to claiming their profile or saving their spot? This insinuates that they’re claiming something that was already meant for them, which lowers resistance and creates attachment. The idea of saving your spot is powerful because it creates exclusivity, almost like a VIP nightclub line. Everybody wants to save their spot in line for the next big thing because they don’t want to be left out.

That creates desire, but what about virality?

Well if you want people to share, you have to give them something of value. This can be a simple, even a graphic could do if designed well.

So we created a digital “golden ticket” if you will that people would get after they signed up. It included a dope image background that created aesthetic value. It included the person’s profile so they felt they were sharing themselves. And the whole thing was customizable too so you could swap out the image or accent colors.

And just like that, we created a mini go to market strategy that can help bridge the gap between soft launch and official release.

15/12/2022

When it’s time to introduce your product to the world, you want to do it right. Which is what we did in designing the 7th ave website. We designed the website to position 7th ave is a community that brings people together though social and audio,. This meant becoming more than just another app. One of the challenges we had to address was the balance between the product and the people. How we highlighted the technology and features with the authentic human connection that they aspired to create.

We did this through three themes: community, collages, and color. The idea was to create a mosaic of diverse puzzle pieces that came together to create the ave. We curated a library of imagery that highlights the richness and diversity of the community. The way the elements of the website are composed within the canvas is inspired by the idea of a moldboard or scrapbook. This presents the Ave as a place where you come to find inspiration as well as somewhere you make memories with your friends and family. The colored background blocks speak to the vibrance and warmth of the brand and allows us to seamlessly blend the UI with ambient background elements.

The final touch was the animation design on the site. We wanted these to feel fresh and dynamic without being too childish or distracting. The animation and transitions helped bring everything to life and make the website stand out visually.

Black Lotus Ventures

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

15/12/2022

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share