From Solingen to Silicon Valley: Instana & the mega deal.

Let’s dive right in with a UX heavyweight: paring down complexity. The initial idea becomes a concrete vision.

Instana was the ultimate challenge from the very beginning: conceived as an application by and for IT masterminds, it regularly pushed us to our limits even in the first phase. What are the requirements of DevOps specialists? How do they work, and what hacks do they use themselves? And how on earth do they keep track of everything? Still, by the end of Phase 1, we all had a clear picture, and the founders knew where they wanted to go.

The vision is in people’s minds. But how can we make the story understandable to customers? How can it captivate users and bring investors to the table? The idea needs a face: a prototype and a rudimentary brand.

Together with Instana’s CEO, we held visualization workshops featuring lots of Lego and a thoroughly challenging process of developing a shared visual and interactive understanding. In the process, the product also gained a tangible face: the robot STAN was brought to life.

Here we go: we’re shifting from innovation mode to development mode. Loose structures become solid code; visual ideas evolve into a design system. The product takes shape and takes flight. Always in focus: users, founders, and investors.

By mid-2016 the time had come: the tangible product vision had convinced the first investors, and further development was secured. And where that led: see right at the top. Today, Instana has around 150 employees and users all over the world. The foundation we built still forms the bedrock of Instana.