Materials MVP — Product overview

Version: 0.1

A materials and design catalogue that turns colour-led discovery into qualified enquiries for suppliers and designers.

Buyers browse anonymously. Suppliers and designers manage catalogue and leads in a shared admin panel. Ranking is driven by colour science (CIELAB / CIEDE2000), not by an LLM guessing “similar products.” Matches are explainable (signature glance, pins, honest %), and photo-match uploads are ephemeral — images are not stored.

Why it matters (USP)

Now

• Match by colour, not keywords. Upload a site or mood photo (or open a material) and get scientifically ranked finishes — similar, complementary, analogous, and product lanes.
• Explainable, honest scores. Match % reflects real colour distance; a signature glance and key-colour pins make ranking inspectable. Featured placement can change order, not inflate the number.
• From inspiration to lead. Shortlist materials and design looks (including AI finish previews), share deeplinks with clients, then submit one structured enquiry with a durable snapshot.
• Two-sided platform. Suppliers self-serve their materials and collections; designers curate looks; both get role-scoped leads from the same funnel.
• Monetization-ready attention. Featured boost already reshapes discovery; analytics and CPV/CPC/CPL are a natural upgrade path.
• Privacy-minded matching. Photo-match images are processed ephemerally for trust with trade and consumer buyers alike.

Planned

• Vibe search & match. Full material semantics unlock style-language discovery (“Japandi — clean but fun, with some pop”), blended with colour ranking / photo match.
• Shareable mood boards. Synced shortlists → named boards with PDF / share packages for clients and project teams (beyond today’s single look / AI-preview deeplinks).

One-line: Colour discovery → confident shortlist → structured lead → monetizable attention.

Not just another…

Who uses it

A future client (logged-in buyer) role is seeded but not exposed yet.

How people use it

• On site (trade): Architect photographs a wall or joinery → photo match → shortlist finishes → enquire for quote — before leaving the meeting.
• At home (consumer): Homeowner explores a Japandi-leaning look → swaps finishes → AI preview → shares the link → enquires when ready (vibe search & match planned to meet them earlier in that journey).
• Supplier launch: Brand features a new SKU → lane and catalogue boost lift visibility → colour-demand analytics show what buyers are matching → path to paid CPV/CPC later.

Buyer journey

1. Catalogue — search and filter (category, finish, application, colour family, supplier); grid or mosaic merchandising; featured / newest sorts. Trade buyers can open collections (series with inherited characteristics), not only single SKUs.
2. Photo match — upload a mood or site photo; multi-lane colour rank; key-colour pins; inspectable signature glance. Uploads are not retained.
3. Material detail — specs, palette, supplier + collection context, suggested lanes of related finishes.
4. Designs — curated looks; colour-suggested alternatives; region swaps; optional AI finish preview; shareable deeplinks for finish groups and AI looks (sales-assist / client review).
5. Shortlist → enquire — review selections; contact fields; intent is inferred automatically (quote, sample when enabled, design as-shown, design with swaps, or general contact) — no confusing intent dropdown. Buyer gets a reference id.

Today’s limits (honest): shortlist is device-local (no login sync); suppliers are not emailed on submit (they check the admin inbox); sample-request UI is built but off by default; no cart or PDF mood boards yet.

Try it on a running instance

1. / — filters, mosaic layout, Photo match
2. Open a material — lanes + collection/supplier links
3. /designs — customize, AI preview, copy a share link
4. /enquiry — review shortlist and submit

Hub and this overview: /docs · /docs/0.1

Discovery engine

Discovery is a deterministic colour pipeline, not generative search. Images become perceptual colour models; candidates are scored with published colour-difference maths; results are organised into lanes. Generative AI is not in this loop.

Why Lab and CIEDE2000

RGB/hex are poor proxies for “how different do these look.” The pipeline uses CIELAB, then CIEDE2000 (ΔE₀₀) — the industry-standard perceptual difference. Finishes that look close in a room still rank close; vivid accents are not treated like large quiet neutrals.

Colour signature

Each published material (and design cover) gets a stored signature: weighted Lab palette (coverage matters), contrast / texture cues, and optional nominal brand colour merged without wiping photographic truth. Design covers use the same model so looks drive suggestions like materials do.

Similarity, harmony, families

• Similarity — palette-aware ΔE → absolute match % (calibrated; not forced to look like 98% on card one). Photo match can weight salience so small vivid accents punch above quiet walls. Lane label: Similar colours — finishes closest to the overall mix (or a focused hue chip).
• Harmony — from up to two chromatic hue anchors in the signature, the engine derives colour-wheel targets, then ranks catalogue candidates on fitness to that relationship (hue / lightness / saturation / neutrality blend) — not “more of the same.”
• Families — nearest of a fixed Lab family set for simple filter chips.

Colour-theory / harmony lanes

These are the pairing intents buyers see as Match-type tabs (wording matches the product UI):

Photo match adds two live-only tabs on top of the same idea:

Pinning one or two key colours in photo match rebuilds harmony targets from those anchors without re-uploading.

Product / surface lanes (material PDP)

Same Match-type chrome, different job — surface and assortment relationships:

(Directional lighter/darker variants exist in the computed blob for internal use; public tabs focus on the rows above.)

Photo match and lanes

Photo match (live): ephemeral upload → extract → Similar + harmony tabs (Complementary, Analogous, Neutral, Triadic, Split complementary, Tetradic) → pins + signature glance + palette-focus chips on Similar.

Material PDP: precomputed colour-theory tabs (Similar through Neutrals) plus product/surface tabs (Tonal match through Contrast pair). Strict criteria first; a softer second pass can fill thin lanes (muted “closest in this type”).

Design show: colour / harmony suggestions from the cover signature (live scorer; same Match-type idea as photo match — not the full product-lane set).

Featured is a read-time layer: diverse, visually interesting picks; up to two featured candidates already in a lane’s pool may be prepended — visibility without rewriting science (wedge for paid boost / CPV / CPC).

AI layer

Colour ranking stays deterministic. AI sits beside that engine: meaning, finish visualisation, and — next — vibe search & match.

Today

1. Design photo semantics (ops) — vision reads a cover → regions, brief cues, style hints, material candidates. Speeds curation; does not replace Lab signatures.

2. Finish preview (buyer) — image-edit applies shortlisted finishes on a look; async generate, poll, shareable link; shortlist into enquiry. “See it on the scene,” not catalogue rank.

3. Provider registry — OpenAI / Gemini configurable so models can change without rewriting flows.

Planned — material semantics and vibe search & match

Extend semantic enrichment from designs to materials (style, mood, materiality, room fit, trend labels) beside the Lab signature. That unlocks vibe search & match:

“Japandi — clean but fun, with some pop.”

Type a vibe, pick chips, or mix with photo match — results stay explainable (tags + colour score).

Also planned: enquiry summaries, NL front door into vibe + colour, upload auto-tagging, abuse controls on public preview.

Lead gen

Contact fields plus a durable snapshot of materials, design groups, swaps, and preview context — still meaningful if catalogue content changes later. Intent is server-inferred from shortlist shape.

• Suppliers see only enquiries that include their materials.
• Designers see only enquiries on their designs.
• One enquiry can touch multiple parties; each inbox is scoped (peers’ lines are not dumped into someone else’s view).
• Status: new → replied → ongoing → resolved → archived in-panel.

Public supplier pages (bio, site, materials); designs show designer name (full public designer profiles later). Suppliers already self-serve catalogue CRUD for their own records — this is a working portal, not a static brochure.

Analytics and how to add value

Already in place

• Photo-match funnel (upload, pin, click, shortlist, failure)
• Daily colour-demand rollups
• Finish-preview operational events

Flywheel: more matches → clearer colour demand → better assortment / merchandising advice for suppliers → stickier catalogue and stronger case for paid attention.

Highest-leverage improvements

Commercial path: featured (now) → measurable boost → CPV/CPC → CPL, with analytics proving ROI.

B2B and B2C

One catalogue today; positioning can split later without rebuilding discovery.

• B2B: specs, collections, supplier pages, quote enquiries, designer curation, self-serve portals → SLA inboxes, RFQ depth, CRM, paid leads.
• B2C: photo match + AI “see it on the look” + share links → accounts, mood boards / PDF packages, retail fulfilment, vibe + trend surfaces.

Roadmap levers

Intentional MVP boundaries — each extends something already shipped:

• Email / SMS on new enquiry
• Monetized leads marketplace and self-serve boost budgets
• Buyer login, synced shortlists, shareable mood boards, PDF packages
• Full BI beyond photo-match analytics
• Public designer profile pages
• Full material semantics + vibe search & match (see AI layer)

Bottom line

Materials MVP is a colour-native materials marketplace spine: explainable scientific discovery, design-led inspiration with AI preview and share loops (and planned vibe search & match), supplier/designer self-serve, and structured two-sided lead capture — with a clear path to analytics-backed monetization (featured → CPV/CPC/CPL).