Resume
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Wireframes
As part of my role as CPO at Faregame, I had to ensure that we built an early prototype to show potential customers and investors that we knew what we are doing and how to convey a story that sounded too good to be true: we’d figured out to do free public transit. I reached out to some trusted UX and design contacts in Lithuania and we worked through the opportunity and came up with these wireframes.
App V1 (android apk)
Admin Dashboard V1
Presentation of Initial Launch.
The above presentation was made on several occasions, including conferences in Vilnius, NYC, London and Hamburg. As the head of product I knew the product inside out and as a musician comfortable of performing and speaking in front of audiences I was able to create an engaging presentation of what we were up to and how we were moving forward. This included a live demonstration of how the app worked (using a mix of AppleTV, a JBL Speaker, iRig and some serious luck).
Wireframes for Major Revision.
After gathering valuable user-feedback from comments, emails as well as usage data I came up with a new user-flow with the help of our UX consultant. This document was presented to the board as well to gain the support needed to move the project forward. For access to the full .pdf (click here).
Version After my Final Involvement.
Unfortunately for the above prototype, I had to strip out a lot of the functionality and comments. Along with JIRA and Slack, inVision was used to help drive product decisions to move things forward. Again, as head of product, I had to ensure that all of the feedback was represented in the backlog and prioritized accordingly. To see the rest of the screens (click here).
Design Approach.
I started this project by working with a Brazil-based design agency whose work I found on Behance and had the perfect style for this idea. I selected the name which is proper Latin that roughly means 'adherents of the Rosary.' The overall graphical inspiration was rose windows. In addition to the overall branding there was iconography within the app that needed to be designed in the same style. I worked with a long-time designer friend from Lithuania to produce those beautiful drawings.
The App and Experience
As this was my first solo app building project I wanted to work with someone that knew what they were doing, that I trusted and that would build things in a way that could be current with respect to technology and also scale relatively easily. MongoDB and Node.js were selected because from the admin console, I could make an update and it propagates to all devices in a matter of moments. It was also super lightweight and there was and continues to be an avid support community to pick up the project and move it forward.
My role, aside from moving the design forward was also to guide the developer (who was not Catholic) to how someone might use this app. The UX needed to be senior citizen proof, so we kept things as basic as possible. There is also the algorithm that goes along with the Rosary mysteries changing depending upon the time of the liturgical year.
After launch of the app, I personally designed and built the splash page. I'm not saying its perfect, but I can build that in HTML and CSS. :)
Design Approach.
I started this project by working with the parish on getting an idea of what they were looking for. They wanted something modern but timeless and that speaks to Our Lady and Peace. I knew the exact person to ask to assist with the design aspects and she did an AMAZING job. The above presentation was what she sent me after several weeks of back and forth about the constantly evolving demands posed by several differing opinions on the parish council.
The Web approach.
For this project I opted to use Wordpress as at the time it was the easiest platform to manage and customize. I worked with a development agency out of Poland that came HIGHLY recommended (and for good reason). After getting a bulk of the work done, there were a couple of widgets that needed customization due to the stringent design requirements: namely, the Calendar and News. For these two pieces, I wrote the specifications for how they should work, which for the calendar included Google integration and for the News included social media integration. For these two widgets I worked with a Lithuanian developer from the past and he did a wonderful job getting those two things knocked out.
Again, It was my role on this one to get everything designed, built and shipped.
Design Approach
I wanted to keep things simple, informative and of course, responsive. The choir name is 'les etoiles de louisiane" so I started by selecting the primary domain name to be lesetoiles.exchange as, although this is the first year it is tried, the expectation is that there will be several exchanges over the years. There is also a second domain ledi.exchange that also points to this one, because sometimes the group is also called "les etoiles d'imersion."
Layout
I opted for a single column approach with a bold header image
I inserted the informational flyer as the main descriptive content
The application is a form that points to a shared Google Sheet,
The final major piece is a streaming media player to play the audition pieces.