Mobile app design and development
During Cal Poly’s 2016 Design and Dev Hackathon, my team and I designed and developed Gleam, an app that connects creative professionals with social causes in need of their services.
Tools: Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, HTML/CSS
Skills: UX/UI design, branding, wireframes and prototype testing, Web development, responsive web design
We started the competition by coming together and learning about each others’ skills and strengths. After learning that one of our three developers specialized in iOS and another in Android, we decided to go the extra mile to produce the application for both platforms. This, along with a bonus website all created in 24 hours, earned us an award in the Development category of the competition. It was so exhilarating to be in that space with so many passionate creative minds, and I learned first hand how valuable close collaboration between design and development can be.
Once we agreed on the overall concept, theme, and logo, I worked with two designers on my team to ideate UX design for the app. This included information architecture, sketching user flows, wireframing, and testing. We thought about the profile creation process by both creatives and causes, and how they would end up finding each other as quickly and conveniently as possible.
While building layouts, one of our goals was to reduce the amount of steps needed to create a profile, while getting as much information as possible for best results. Instead of making the creatives reiterate their resumes, we gave them the option of retrieving information from their LinkedIn profiles.
As the only person on the team with both front-end coding and design skills, I produced the website entirely on my own and worked with our three developers to ensure that visual elements and UI were cohesive between the apps and website.
