SideTrack is project management software with a focus on musicians and the music industry
Role: UX/UI designer
Timeline: 4 weeks
SideTrack is project management software with a focus on musicians and the music industry
Our mission when creating SideTrack was to help musicians collaborate in the digital space. We found that while there is a lot of different project management software and many different music mixing software neither overlapped or were cross functional in any useful way to musicians.
we had a team of five people. My role was UX/UI designer, we all five shared responsibilities through out the design process. From research to prototype. Our deliverable was a high fidelity figma prototype. Tools used: Miro, Google suite, figma, invision, adobe creative suite, bootstrap.
the project timeline was four weeks and the objective was to create a product that solved a problem
During our research phase we started out with the idea that musicians needed a way to collaborate remotely or hold jam sessions. after interviews and a survey we found that unless we could figure out a way to eliminate latency there was no solution we could make that would be helpful to musicians.
After going over our data again looking for a different pain point to solve we found that most survey participants used many different services to plan and create a music project. After sending out a second survey relating to music project management we found that there was no proper service for musicians.
With our research in mind we came up with the idea for a project management software that integrated key music services and had features directed at creating a music oriented project.
Our focus while ideating was to create a few features aimed at the music industry that were not standard to project management software. The answer to this was our audio comment recording feature. This feature allows users to record comments over an audio track, which allows for clearer communication about the audio.
The visual design we wanted for our prototype was something that looked electric and technological. When prototyping we focused on creating the flows for the features we felt were non standard as we thought the more standard project management feature had been thoroughly worked out by the many other project management services.
Through testing we found that our users thought our original design was a bit busy. To solve this problem we decided to allow users to minimize widgets they were not using. We also felt that in the future if we added a short and thoughtful tutorial would help users become acquainted with each feature making the layout less overwhelming.
Overall we found that we learned a lot while working on this project and found that research is very important when trying to create an empathetic product. Our hope for the future for this product are to find stakeholders and to continue iterating on the design.
Buzzword is an app that helps non-native english speakers learn industry jargon and colloquialisms
Role: UX/UI designer
Timeline: 4 weeks
Buzzword is an app that helps non-native english speakers learn industry jargon and colloquialisms.
The goal of this project was to solve a life problem using an app. We chose to focus on the issues of non-native english speakers who had moved to the US or and English speaking country. The English language has a lot of complex and diverse phrases and colloquialisms which can make it hard for non-native speakers to follow casual or work conversations. Our goal to help these users by creating an app that teaches one word of phrase a day, our focus was on words and phrases that would not be the focus or commonly found in traditional English classes.
Team of 4. My role was UX designer, we all four shared responsibilities through out the design process. From research to prototype. Our deliverable was a high fidelity figma prototype.
Tools used were: Miro, Google suite, figma, invision, adobe creative suite.
the project timeline was four weeks and the objective was to create an app idea that solved a common problem
For our user research we interviewed five people who moved to the US knowing some english, and asked them about their experiences learning to speak a new language while working. we also conducted a google survey that got 18 responses from people of varying ages and language background.
After our interviews we collated our data and found that the issue of learning english words that are not included in most languages courses was a common theme in our research. We decided to focus on this issue.
With our focus of teaching uncommon english phrases and different work related terms we started to brainstorm ideas for how we could do that in an app. One of our main goals for our app was to make it very accessible to working and busy individuals, while still being an effective learning environment. With these ideas in mind we settled on an app that would try to teach you one new word or phrase a day, while also allowing you to review old words or phrases to keep them fresh in your memory.
We started our prototyping phase by making four separate paper prototypes and then comparing the features and layouts of each and combining them into one midfi prototype on figma. Our original design had a separate page and menus for our four features.
Through testing we found that having a separate page for each feature was clunky and most of our users had trouble discerning what the main goal of the app was. To fix this we merged all the features on to one main home page and had them separated in a clear logical way.
At the end of this process we found we had created a very promising Idea and felt there could be a real opportunity to continuing the product further if we had the proper time and resources. Moving forward we hoped to add different language sets based on industry or subject. Also we hoped to design and test a type of social element to the app.
Women's Daytime Drop-in Center is a NPO that helps homeless women and their children during the day while most shelters are closed.
Role: UI designer
Timeline: 4 weeks
Women's Daytime Drop-in Center is a NPO that helps homeless women and their children during the day while most shelters are closed.
The goal of our project was to help WDDC redesign their website so that it was more accessible and friendly to donators and patrons of their shelter. We started our project by interviewing the director of WDDC who let us know what their largest pain points were with the website
we had a team of five people. My role was UI designer, we all five shared responsibilities through out the design process. From research to prototype.
Our deliverable was a high fidelity figma prototype. Tools used were: Miro, Google suite, figma, invision, adobe creative suite.
the project timeline was four weeks and the objective was to redesign a website for a non-profit
For our user research we started by interviewing the steakholder who was the director of the WDDC. We then interviewed four people who we considered to be likely to donate to Non-Profits and Charities. We also conducted a survey asking people about their donation habits
Through our research we found that a lot of the links on the website were broken and the donation process wasn't streamlined.
We planned to improve the website by making sure each page followed a style guide, and there was a clear way to donate to the organization
We started our prototype by working together to decide how we wanted the website to be laid out. Once we blocked out the major portions of the website we had some users do 5 second usability tests to see if our layout was on the right track. After our usability tests we started adding color schemes and high fi images.
After creating a hi-fi prototype we had users go through another round of usability testing. From this testing session we found that some of the button placements and button copy could be optimized.
Our end product was a very clean and inviting web prototype. Looking forward we hoped to add a Spanish translation of the website as well as more resources for women in need.
Candy Cave is a local multiplayer monster fighting game
Core responsibility was UX research and game design.
Tools: Unity, G suite, Phototshop, Blender
Candy Cave is a multiplayer mobile game we created from 2013-2015. Our initial idea was to make an rpg that was cute and easy for kids to understand. Like Diablo but with candy.
Problems & Opportunities we wanted to solve
Local multiplayer on mobile was not common, and cumbersome to setup
Dungeon exploration is typically grim-dark.
Dungeon clearing games like Diablo are popular, but there wasn’t a great mobile free-to-play adaptation at the time
Core idea
Build a cute endless diablo with seamless local multiplayer using a free to play business model.
Address grim-dark theme by switching to cute/candy
Address local multiplayer friction by using automatic peer discovery
Adopted free to play model by charging a hard currency for reviving players in the dungeon and having a hard to soft currency conversion that allowed players to buy items in the shop.
What went well
Technology
We were able to solve the local multiplayer problems we originally identified
We created a level editor that was easy to use
Using level tiles we procedurally generated dungeon floors
Content & Design
Our character creator was one of our most loved features
We created a large number of quality items, clothing and avatar customization options for a team of our size
Boss fights created some break up of levels
Puzzle levels also added variety to the level tiles
Marketing
We were able to get a feature in a YouTube video that got over 500,000 views for free
Team
We had a great team of devs that worked very well together
What went poorly
Average number of players in any given session was just around ~1.1, so while we had solved the technical problem for multiplayer most players played single player.
We think this is because most people discovering the game are not at that moment with friends.
We didn’t have a real marketing strategy and had very little experience in the realm of marketing
We didn’t spend enough time balancing the elements in the game and it became difficult to fix our past mistakes
We tried to simplify Diablo, but we went too far and stripped all of the progression mechanics from the game. Players liked the moment to moment, but complained they didn’t know what their overarching goal was supposed to be.
How we got here was we wanted to make sure that players could play together, even if they had started at different times.
This led to us teleporting new players to where the existing players were in the dungeon when they joined, and we flattened the difficulty curve to support the new players.
We also wanted to remove as many numbers from the game as we could in the name of simplicity, which removed clarity in combat and critically removed experience and levels from players, destroying the overarching progression.
Outcomes
Game got ~50,000 downloads and negligible revenue
Team got valuable game experience which landed two of the members jobs in the game industry
Takeaways
Needed to release earlier
Needed to play test more often
Needed to understand our reference games better
Needed to solve the right problems, for example internet multiplayer would have been easier technically and more players would have benefited
