Matterport Axis
Smartphone captures had a stitching problem: alignment errors that hurt model quality and undermined trust in the product. Axis was an automated motor mount that rotated 360° and took six photos with perfect alignment. I led product design and industrial design from proof of concept through launch in six months.
Company
Matterport (3D capture platform, acquired by CoStar for $1.6B)
Role
Lead Product Designer + Industrial Design Lead
Team
Mobile PM, Hardware PM, iOS Engineer, Android Engineer, third-party ID vendors
Impact
Created a $15M/year hardware line
85% churn reduction
4.7x more spaces created
Japan Good Design Award
What I did
Our users were professional photographers and real estate agents. High-end cameras were too expensive for most of them and manual smartphone capture was too slow and error-prone. Axis sat in between: automated, precise, and phone-based.
I led product design on the mobile app, worked with third-party vendors on industrial design (both reviewing and designing elements directly), supported brand on packaging and the quick-start guide, and built renders and animations in Blender for marketing.
Industrial Design
I led multiple rounds of ID revision: alignment indicators, mounting hardware, and grip. The goal was consistent phone placement without fiddling and a one-button capture model that didn't need any training.
Adding remote control and audio feedback meant design changes throughout the process, and I worked closely with hardware and mobile PMs to keep the connection and scanning experience as simple as the physical product itself.
Shipping under constraints
Early prototypes required pairing, calibration, and manual triggers. I pushed for one-button capture: mount your phone, press one button, and walk away.
I designed seamless device detection so there was no manual pairing, clear connection status in the header, and first-time onboarding for positioning with product photos. I also added sound alerts for scan completion so users could be in another room while Axis captured.
Six months from ideation to launch. Met initial week sales goals within hours.
The Outcomes
Axis became a $15M/year hardware line and met its weekly sales goals within hours of launch. It won Japan's Good Design Award (Best 100) alongside the Xbox Adaptive Controller and Magic Leap 2.
85% churn reduction compared to smartphone-only capture, and 4.7x more spaces created with Axis over the customer lifetime.